The title of this article isn’t mine. These were the words drummer Gerald Cleaver was frantically shouting at the very beginning of the concert. He stepped to the edge of the stage at Bio Central cinema, right in front of the audience. He was keeping the beat with his drumsticks, while Rodrigo Amado and James Banner had already started improvising.

He was electrified, stern, with a serious expression on his face. He shouted that we hadn’t come for a “show”. That we were here for the heart. It was like a sermon, or an awakening from some kind of emotional or intellectual slumber. A sermon reminding us that we hadn’t come out for a pleasant cultural evening on a Saturday night; that we had come to actually feel something. To experience something true, honest, real.

Once upon a time, about twenty years ago, I went to the Sziget Festival in Hungary with a friend. Back then, the festival had a “jazz tent”, so we went together to see Joe McPhee perform. My friend was into rock and metal music, but he came along and was somewhat surprised by how unpretentious the whole event was. No roadies tuning the instruments (the musicians do that themselves), no fanfare, no light show, no spectacular entrance onto the stage (because everyone is already somewhere around). The music is acoustic, mostly improvised, created on the spot, and sounds incredibly raw and unpolished.

Those of us who make up the so-called “jazz audience” are already quite used to all this, and these observations may seem trivial. But we shouldn’t take any of it for granted. After all, jazz festivals are also a part of the “event industry”, so it’s only logical and natural that we experience them as “entertainment” or a “show”, just from the perspective of the “cultural elites”.

I’ve seen Gerald Cleaver live several times in different formations. I’ve always thought of him as a quiet guy in the background who does his job properly, without too much fuss or spectacle. That made his sermon-like performance at the very beginning of this concert all the more intense and unexpected. It put us in exactly the right frame of mind for music that evokes the spirit of African-American jazz from the 1960s, a tradition in which Rodrigo Amado excels.

There are few saxophonists today who manage to create that feeling that some “higher power” is playing through them, that through those torrents of notes and furious solos, a kind of “truth” is speaking, something direct and uncorrupted by “concept”. Perhaps we can hear something of Coltrane’s “transcendence” or Rollins’s fundamental jazz sound in his solos, contributing to the wonderful impression of hearing universal jazz music in its spiritual and aesthetic essence.

I was very sad to learn that Joëlle Léandre had to cancel her appearance with the trio at the last minute due to illness. She was replaced by Berlin-based double bassist James Banner, who found himself in the rather unenviable position of stepping in for such a legendary figure with practically no preparation, while also performing with Amado and Cleaver for the first time in his life. The fact that everything worked very well – although with the focus naturally shifting towards Amado – is a testament both to the resilience of jazz as a genre and to its ability to find solutions to seemingly “impossible” situations through improvisation.

I’ve started this report in the “wrong” order because Cleaver provided the perfect material for the title and opening section. So we might as well abandon chronology altogether and continue with some thoughts on the concerts that took place at Bio Central cinema during the final two days of the festival.

ECM and beyond

On the same evening, Arcanum Quartet performed, featuring ECM heavyweights: trumpeter Arve Henriksen, saxophonist Trygve Seim, double bassist Anders Jormin, and drummer Markku Ounaskari. Their performance certainly presented a very different vision of jazz music, one we associate with the ECM label and Scandinavia, but we could also say that this was music performed with an equally strong sense of authority.

Take Trygve Seim and especially Arve Henriksen, for example. You simply can’t mistake them for any other saxophonist or trumpeter. In a DownBeat blindfold test, recognising one of their solos would be the easiest task imaginable. Few jazz musicians have managed to create such a distinctive and recognisable sound over the years, which doesn’t mean their solos are predictable or boring. Rather, there’s that extra level of excitement, the anticipation of hearing the very first note they play and then simply surrendering to their music.

Arcanum is, however, a collective band of four musicians, and their music moves in different directions, from “ECM-style ballads” to freer and more energetic territory. I was particularly delighted to hear their interpretation of Wayne Shorter’s composition “Nefertiti”, recorded by Miles Davis, which was definitely “ahead of its time” and sounds quite unexpected, yet perfectly natural, in the hands of these musicians today. There was also a striking “vocal solo” by Henriksen, who “sang” through his trumpet pressed against the microphone. And many other wonderful moments in a beautifully balanced concert.

Avant-fun

The day before, I saw the French band BRIQUE, which was again something completely different from everything mentioned above. This band was particularly important to me because it features pianist Eve Risser, whom I’ve been a fan of since the old days when she played with the Orchestre National de Jazz, and later in countless other formations she led as a composer and bandleader.

But unlike her solo projects or the groups in which she stood out as an avant-garde improviser or an accomplished composer and arranger, her role in BRIQUE is somewhat different. This is a band with no obvious leaders, although the very intense vocalist Bianca Iannuzzi naturally dominates. The quartet is completed by bassist Luc Ex and drummer Francesco Pastacaldi, whom fans of more avant-garde jazz may know best from guitarist Julien Desprez’s band Abacaxi.

As their official biography puts it, “BRIQUE is a quartet that moves between lyrical song, improvisation, and a rawer urban energy”, and that would be a perfectly adequate short description of their music. While watching their concert, I was also thinking about how great improvisers – when they want to – have an exceptional feel for the “song”, understood through the lens of popular culture or the alternative/indie scene. Think of Fire! Orchestra, for example, or Mariam Wallentin on her latest album, although BRIQUE is certainly a story of its own. What all these bands have in common, however, is a particular sensitivity to subtle nuances and micro-improvisations that enrich music driven by pop or rock energy.

The point isn’t to have a “jazz solo” burst out like fireworks after the chorus, but to shift the song slightly off its axis, enrich it with all kinds of sonic layers, and let improvisation happen through “falling out of rhythm”, making the melody sound unfamiliar, breaks in unexpected places, and, why not, even some carefully measured improvised passages.

BRIQUE masterfully navigate this musical landscape, while Bianca Iannuzzi showers the listener with a lavish performance full of screams, pseudo-operatic excursions, classic rock energy, superb avant-garde improvisation, spoken-word intensity, and who knows what else.

The Czech Scene

I also saw two Czech bands at the festival. Kristina Bárta’s Red Landscape performed on the 4th evening of the festival at Petrof Gallery. The venue is essentially a showroom for the Petrof piano factory, which was founded in Hradec Králové and continues to operate successfully to this day, giving the concert an interesting historical dimension.

The performance itself had two intertwined elements, alternating between purely instrumental pieces and those in which singer Petra Brabencová played an important role. This is a solid post-bop band with accessible tunes and skilled improvisers, although my own preferences definitely leaned more towards the basic instrumental approach.

On the same evening, before BRIQUE’s performance, Marcel Bárta & Die Clique took the stage, led by the experienced saxophonist of the same name. The band also featured three quarters of the Janoušek-Wróblewski Quartet, a group I helped organise a mini-tour of four Serbian cities for a few years ago, ending with a performance at Radio Belgrade’s Studio 6.

So I was happy to see them again, especially the furious trombonist Štěpán Janoušek, who strongly reminded me of Gianluca Petrella that evening, both in his stage energy and playing style. At certain moments, even the whole band resembled the space jazz of Petrella’s Cosmic Renaissance, with keyboardist Vojtěch Procházka making a significant contribution to that impression.

But this was just one part of Marcel Bárta’s stylistic palette. With his new band, he explores different aspects of broadly defined “contemporary jazz”, ranging from post-bop to neo-fusion. The material performed was of varying quality, and at times perhaps lacked stylistic cohesion and focus. But at its best, this band reached an impressive level of creativity and playing intensity.

(Without) Conclusion

This is the part of the article where I’m supposed to somehow “round off my impressions” and sum up everything that happened over several days of the festival. These days, weeks, and months, AI has been doing a brilliant job of polishing the texts of distinguished and not-so-distinguished cultural journalists and columnists, often delivering the perfect punchlines in introductions and conclusions that manage to be both “catchy” and “smart”. But all those punchlines and “insights” sound painfully uniform and identical in their technical brilliance.

The appeal of jazz music lies precisely in human unpredictability and imperfection, in quick, lucid, and creative responses to “mistakes”, in inventing something new on the spot – in other words, in what we usually call improvisation. In that sense, jazz journalists can (and should) also be “imperfect”, even if our writing isn’t the „smartest ever“ or the most stylistically polished.

So instead of a summary of the festival itself, I’m offering my two cents on jazz writing, and inviting my dear colleagues to remain imperfect, vulnerable, and human together, just like the music we love and listen to with so much excitement and joy.

What does it take for a (jazz) concert to be good, great, magical?

Is it enough for the music simply to be good? Or do the musicians need to be particularly inspired and bring something new and unexpected to the live performance, compared to their studio recordings? Or simply improvise like never before?

What happens if the music is excellent and the musicians are inspired, but the sound is terribly mixed and the hall has poor acoustics? Or if the venue is simply bad for some other reason? Or if everything is perfectly fine, but you’re just too tired or weighed down by personal problems and worries to really get into the concert?

In my humble opinion, for a jazz concert to be successful, it’s essential to create a sense of intimacy, of closeness between the musicians on stage and the people in the audience. We don’t need spectacle, giant video screens or flashy light shows. We need to communicate, to feel the emotion directly, to see the expressions on the band members’ faces, to sense their dynamics, the glances they exchange, how they react to feedback from the audience. To feel when they’re excited, and when they’re surprised (by themselves or by their fellow musicians). Even when they make a “mistake”, which in jazz always means an opportunity for a quick reaction and creativity, a chance for something unexpected and therefore all the more exciting to happen.

I was thinking about all this after the second night of the Jazz Goes To Town festival in Hradec Králové, following performances by the Olie Brice Quartet and In Cahoots feat. Ingrid Laubrock at Divadlo Drak (Dragon Theatre). It’s a venue with around 70 seats, very cosy, and one that already creates that much-desired sense of closeness and immediacy, of something “real” in our increasingly AI-generated world.

On the other hand, the fact that this is a theatre is far from insignificant. In that sense, we can also see jazz concerts themselves – as opposed to popular music concerts or large-scale productions across different genres – as something akin to theatre performances in a world that values Hollywood spectacle or Netflix binges. None of this means that a “jazz concert” somehow gains additional value by crossing paths with another art form, but rather that jazz and theatre share some very important qualities – a focus on the immediacy of live performance, vulnerability, the ability to improvise, and direct contact with the audience.

Everything was perfect on this particular evening at Jazz Goes To Town, from the venue to the sound, acoustics and lighting, allowing the wonderful music of the Olie Brice Quartet to come fully into its own. I must admit that I wasn’t familiar with Olie Brice’s work before coming to the concert, nor with his band – with the exception of Alexander Hawkins – so the whole experience of their music was new and exciting to me.

The quartet takes the jazz of the 1960s as its starting point, with certain references to John Coltrane, but from there develops a thoroughly personal approach, without trying to obviously “recreate the sixties” or jump on the modern spiritual jazz revival bandwagon. Rather, I’d say that Olie Brice perfectly understands the universal values and spirit of jazz and embraces them wholeheartedly, just like his fantastic band.

Rachel Musson had a particularly special place in this line-up, a saxophonist with a perfect, warm tone, effortlessly moving between beautiful, melodic phrases and wild growls, always with restraint and a feel for the band and the music itself. In theatrical terms, this would be a classic drama featuring renowned, first-rate actors at the height of their powers.

In that context, In Cahoots, led by Frank Gratkowski, would be more like an avant-garde troup or some kind of postmodern theatre, approaching its art in a highly conceptual and complex way, but also with a certain metanarrative approach in which we simultaneously follow the performance itself and the way it is being created from the artists’ perspective. Although all this might sound “pretentious”, Gratkowski approaches the performance with plenty of wit, humour and an easy rapport with the audience, breaking down any possible barriers that might arise.

In practice, this means watching the musicians sort out some problems with timers on their smartphones between compositions; or Gratkowski explaining the concepts or titles of the pieces, charmingly and spontaneously, occasionally wandering off into digressions about translations or memories of earlier concerts, and so on. Of course, none of this is new, and Gratkowski is hardly the first or last musician to have a relaxed relationship with the audience – far from it – but our experience of any art is always shaped by its context.

In this case, all of this takes place during a performance of highly complex, compositionally ambitious avant-garde jazz, in which the themes are precisely written out and meticulously performed, and improvisations don’t unfold through a mere succession of soloists, but within defined compositional frameworks. As a result, the concertgoer enjoys the performance on two levels – emotionally, but also intellectually, where they can (potentially) feel the excitement of Gratkowski’s compositional ingenuity and his particular sense of dramaturgy and tension.

We could feel this most clearly during the very long central composition in which the band occasionally played as if in slow motion, and where a couple of deceptive breaks led the audience to believe the piece had ended, prompting (premature) applause. It is in this back-and-forth between the composer’s intentions and the audience’s deceptive perceptions, between the seriousness of the music and the relaxed attitude of its creator, that this “meta-level” of the performance unfolds, adding another exciting layer to an outstanding musical performance.

On the festival’s third night, the theatrical approach to a concert was taken to its highest level with the performance by Jeppe Zeeberg and the Absolute Pinnacle of Human Achievement. Except that here we’re talking about neither classical nor avant-garde theatre, but a kind of humorous performance with elements of classical comedy. At first, the band relies on “ironic” and playful dashes through different genres, starting with hard rock and then wandering through country, ragtime, classical music, and who knows what else.

As the show progresses, these musical “jokes” come thick and fast, until eventually the concert gives way to a full-blown performance piece in which Jeppe Zeeberg marks off the space around the seats with adhesive tape and hands out blank sheets of A4 paper, while the band members perform certain narrative segments into the microphone, take pictures with their smartphones, and so on and so forth. In the end, they return to a handful of shorter musical pieces – all with humorous titles – before bringing to a close a performance that, judging by the loud laughter, delighted the audience.

But what was the “bigger point” or idea behind this musical performance, beyond the the intention to be funny? The whole concept of “ironically mixing incompatible genres” has long been explored on the alternative jazz scene and has already become somewhat canonised, so in that sense it no longer has the “edge” it once did. But Zeeberg takes even this concept to the level of outright parody. Is he mocking postmodern eclecticism in music? Or testing the audience’s patience for “contemporary performance art”, as Ruben Östlund so brilliantly portrayed in his film The Square? Or perhaps there’s no need to overthink it at all, and we should simply accept that even a traditionally “serious jazz audience” could use a little humour and relaxation?

This was one of those concerts where I found myself somewhat out of step with the audience’s reaction, although I have to say that Zeeberg himself is an outstanding performer, and I was genuinely thrilled by one particularly inspired free-ragtime segment he played on the piano. With mixed feelings, but also plenty of inspiration for further reflections on musical performance and performance in music, I bring this piece to a close and look forward to the rest of the Jazz Goes to Town festival.

I first visited the Jazz Goes To Town festival in the Czech city of Hradec Králové in 2022, at the invitation of its programmer, saxophonist Michal Wróblewski. His selection largely matched my own musical taste, and I had no urgent commitments at my regular job, so I gladly accepted the invitation and visited the festival for the first time.

This year, circumstances worked in my favour once again, so I returned to the festival, where the programme includes In Cahoots feat. Ingrid Laubrock, Amado/Leandre/Cleaver Trio, Arcanum Quartet (Trygve Seim, Arve Henriksen, Anders Jormin, Markku Ounaskari), BRIQUE (with Eve Risser), and many others.

On these pages and elsewhere, I have often written about what the “essence of a festival” actually is, and what makes a jazz festival interesting beyond the “pure music” — in other words, beyond the quality of the musicians who come to play. A large number of jazz festivals count on their tourist appeal almost as much as on the music itself, especially those held during the summer, when people are taking their holidays. Others have decades of reputation behind them and take place in major national capitals; still others gather jazz nerds in small towns and are known for their uncompromising attitude, bringing together a niche audience and communities of musicians and dedicated jazz people.

When it comes to Jazz Goes To Town, my knowledge of the situation in the Czech Republic is still limited, and I wouldn’t dare judge the festival’s importance for the Czech scene itself. From the perspective of someone coming from outside, what attracts me to this festival is its particular sense of “comfort” and “cosiness”.

Compared with major urban centres and capital cities, Hradec Králové is a relatively small (or perhaps “medium-sized”) city, where all the festival venues are generally within a 15–20 minute walk. There are two or three concerts during the day, and there is no typical accompanying programme of exhibitions, press conferences or panel discussions, which means that the focus is firmly on the concerts in the evening.

For jazz enthusiasts who also have experience with very intense jazz festivals, an event like this can be very pleasant precisely because of its relaxed pace. Your brain can properly absorb each concert, nothing goes on until very late at night, and during the day you have time to sleep and get some proper rest (or do your regular job online during the working week). Hradec Králové is not a hectic city, which adds to the feeling of relaxation. It also has several excellent coffee shops and some very decent restaurants, all of which provides great “logistics” for enjoying the concerts as well.

The concert venues are mostly fairly traditional — cinemas, theatres and concert halls — with one exception being the performance by Prague Quiet Music Collective at Sauna NUUK, which could turn out to be one of those performances that become an “event in itself” through the sheer creativity of the setting.

The festival began last night with a concert by vocalist Lenka Gálisová and her quartet, and continues tonight with a double bill: Olie Brice Quartet (Olie Brice, Rachel Musson, Alexander Hawkins, Will Glaser) and the already mentioned In Cahoots (Gratkowski / Zoubek / Landfermann / Mahnig) with Ingrid Laubrock.

Depending on time and how things unfold “on the field”, I’ll write at least one, and perhaps two, festival reports over the next few days, while posting more stories and reels on Instagram.

Stay tuned.

The idea of the harp in jazz is nothing new, and of course we’ll primarily associate it with the iconic albums of Alice Coltrane. Today, as expected, we can also find it in a number of bands with the “spiritual” tag, but I’d say that Julie Campiche approaches the harp from a different, more authentic perspective. Already on her previous couple of quartet albums, it was clear that this Swiss artist was reaching more broadly, both towards electronics and “alternative music” in a wider sense, while at the same time retaining her jazz credibility.

But on her current album Unspoken, she enters the avant-pop domain as a song-oriented vocalist and harpist, in tracks with a strong feminist charge and titles that pay tribute to strong women who are important to her. So the broader context of her album is not so much the usual “Alice Coltrane universe” as perhaps Joanna Newsom, if we’re talking about a creative approach to the harp in popular music. Still, this is a completely authentic album with several really strong songs, so I can see the potential for “Campiche style” to become a new (affirmative) musical reference.

The album was released by Ronin Rhythm Records, the label founded by pianist Nik Bärtsch, which is also an interesting detail. The label isn’t new and has long been somewhere around the musicians connected with his projects, but I believe it has great potential – of course not for mainstream success, but to strengthen its “label identity” and become a focal point of the creative European cross-genre scene.

Last week I tried to listen to several free jazz or avant-garde albums, but each time I would give up when the saxophones or trumpets became too loud or nervous. For me, this isn’t a new phenomenon. I’ve written before about how I divided my listening persona into one that enjoys more “extreme” jazz at concerts, and another that enjoys more “balanced” jazz at home, and that works perfectly OK. I confirmed this as soon as I put on Mark Guiliana’s new album BEAT Music 2.0 (Edition Records), on which the drummer presents his neo-retro fusion, or highly produced music based on rhythm and synths.

We mostly think of jazz as music of strong improvisational personalities, or music that gains a new dimension in live performance thanks to the exceptional imagination of its authors and performers. But there is also a very strong faction of jazz that translates its essential qualities into a studio framework. Production and post-production in that sense aren’t an “additional instrument”, but also a kind of philosophy of sound, something best demonstrated by the work of Scandinavian musicians such as Jan Bang, Erik Honoré or Nils Petter Molvær.

Guiliana approaches studio sound in a very entertaining way. When I use “neo-retro” or “retro-futurism” as a reference, by that I mean music that sounds as if it could have been made, for example, in the 1980s (based on the dominant instruments and approach to production), but which would have sounded a little “ahead of its time” back then because of some of its creative and stylistic solutions.

What is “old” isn’t only the technical approach, but also a kind of homage to the melodies of that time, or a specific sentiment, pathos, something that sounds seemingly “naive” but also becomes slightly strange when removed from its historical pop-cultural context.

In that sense, Mark Guiliana is a master of “fusion” understood in a broader meaning, beyond the narrow jazz context in which we most often associate the term with the jazz-rock or jazz-funk of the 1970s and 1980s. He successfully connects and mixes not only musical styles and techniques, but also their emotional and semantic layers, while remaining communicative and seductive in his approach.

Jazz Across Europe

I’ve already written about my fondness for everything connected with We Jazz Records, which over the past few years has been turning into a real “We Jazz Universe”. A few months ago, I talked about this with Matti Nives, the founder and spiritus movens of We Jazz, in my first audio interview on Eurojazzist. For years, one of the most visible segments of his work has been the We Jazz Festival, which this year was renamed the Väreet festival. This year the festival takes place from December 2 to 5 in Helsinki, and the performers include the Fire! trio and Orchestra, Goran Kajfeš Subtropic Arkestra & Avin Omar, Superposition, Verneri Pohjola, Timo Lassy, Kahil El’Zabar’s Ethnic Heritage Ensemble… the names speak for themselves.

The other festival that particularly catches my eye this week is Jazztopad in the Polish city of Wrocław (November 13–22, 2026), for several reasons. The first is the programme, which has several real gems. Alongside SML, who are definitely a live attraction, and the Amir ElSaffar Quartet, who dominate the first part of the festival, towards the end we have William Parker and Hamid Drake with Shabaka, followed by an intriguing programme called “An opera created by Wayne Shorter and esperanza spalding“, DoYeon Kim, Darius Jones Trio….

But my attention was also caught by the Concerts in Living Rooms programme, which connects well with my earlier thoughts about whether (and how) the concept of jazz concerts and festivals should be redefined. Enrico Bettinello from the festival Jazz & Wine of Peace Cormons made a number of great points and observations on the subject in the comments, and these concerts in Wrocław are another practical response to the dilemmas raised.

On the day this text is published, legendary double bassist Dave Holland celebrates his 80th birthday. I’m sure several more pieces dedicated to this jazz giant will appear on Substack, and that every single one of them will be excellent, properly summing up his decades-long career, his importance and his influence on the scene.

When it comes to my own relationship with Holland’s music, however, things are somewhat different and more complicated.

I’ve been listening to jazz since 2001, and during the first few years I listened exclusively to the classics and albums recorded up to 1967, so there wasn’t much room for Dave Holland. When I finally came across his name, it happened completely by chance, through the 2002 album “What Goes Around”. Only later did I become familiar with his historical significance, but his early-2000s work still mattered less to me than everything else I was listening to at the time.

When the Belgrade Jazz Festival was revived in 2005 after a 14-year hiatus, one of the major, almost mythical boosts to the festival came from a Dave Holland concert that people still talk about today, not only because of the music, but also because of the incredible crowd and chaos in the Main Hall of Dom omladine, caused by the poor organisation of seated and standing areas. Paradoxically, this major failure by the festival team, by any objective measure, was perfect for building “hype” and creating the image of an event. Something was so exciting that people were practically climbing over one another just to see these fantastic musicians.

Holland was joined that night by Chris Potter, Robin Eubanks, Steve Nelson and Nate Smith, and by my own choice I missed this important piece of jazz history in Serbia. Arrogantly, I dismissed it as some kind of “boring mainstream” and saved my limited funds for a couple of other concerts that year.

The shift in my perception of Dave Holland’s work happened in parallel on two levels. The first was historical: I heard (and fell in love with) the legendary album “Conference of the Birds”, while around the same time I also watched the famous documentary “Miles Electric: A Different Kind of Blue” about the concert at the Isle of Wight Festival, where a young Dave Holland was one of the protagonists. I became aware of the sheer breadth of his career and its exciting first phase, including his involvement in one of the key transitional periods in jazz history.

The second important event came in 2012, when I went to the Garana Jazz Fest in Romania for the first time. At the beginning of the third festival evening, while it was still daylight, the first concert was given by Holland’s (then new) PRISM line-up, featuring Craig Taborn, Kevin Eubanks and Eric Harland alongside the bandleader. I was vividly reminded of this concert after listening to one of the three parts of the “Freedom Call” box set that Edition Records is releasing these days, featuring three previously unreleased Holland concerts from the 2000s with different line-ups.

It was magical. Craig Taborn was the obvious favourite for me, but I also really enjoyed Eubanks’s “dirty blues” guitar parts, and of course Dave Holland’s playing. Some of it undoubtedly had to do with the fantastic atmosphere at Garana, a festival with a hippie vibe where people sit on tree trunks, surrounded by forest in the middle of nowhere. The crowd gave the band a standing ovation, certainly more heartfelt than the polite applause jazz bands often receive.

The very next year I saw the same line-up at the Skopje Jazz Festival and was thrilled once again, confirming that my first impression hadn’t been a fluke.

Over the following years, I saw Dave Holland several times at various festivals, in different line-ups. I also began to recognise something far more essential in his work than the way particular groups sounded in a concert setting.

It was his tone on the double bass. Beautiful, round, precise, full, warm. I would say – textbook, in the best sense of the word. The kind where Holland is the “professor”, setting standards for others to follow if they wish.

Of course, we could name various double bassists whose tone and style might be described as paradigmatic of jazz as a whole. Ron Carter, for instance, or Paul Chambers. In that sense, Holland’s style is somewhat different and clearly belongs to the decades that followed, but at the same time it contains something elemental, something that bridges eras and connects the 1940s and 1950s with modern times.

As a talented young man, he caught a glimpse of the fusion era; as a composer, he came of age in the vicinity of the free jazz aesthetic. He then went on to set his own standards for what some would call mainstream and others “modern creative” music, in the language of contemporary jazz criticism. Throughout all of this, his tone is like an anchor, something that “grounds” the music and gives it a foundation, in the best sense of the word.

The other thing I began to notice concerns Dave Holland as a person. I don’t actually know him personally, but I’ve watched and read interviews and observed the way he communicates with audiences, musicians on stage and, finally, the media. Even without any “behind-the-scenes” access, you can easily sense the positive energy that radiates from him when he walks onto a stage. I have the impression that this energy is unmistakably transmitted to the musicians and the audience, becoming an essential part of the overall experience of every one of his concerts.

On one occasion, as part of the PR team of the Pančevo Jazz Festival, I spoke with Holland on the phone in place of a journalist colleague who had prepared the questions but didn’t speak English well. There were a couple of questions about his work with Miles, and I was slightly worried that he would be bored having to tell, probably for the thousandth time, the same stories about that period.

But I was completely wrong. It wasn’t even merely professionalism or a well-practised way of answering; I could feel his genuine joy in remembering that time and his collaboration with Miles Davis. Perhaps even a sense of humility and gratitude, which remains powerful even today, when Dave Holland is one of the greatest living legends of jazz.

All these essential qualities of his music and personality have probably contributed to Dave Holland’s ability to remain relevant in every decade of his career, never fading into obscurity over the course of nearly 50 years.

Happy 80th birthday, Mr Holland.

After digging the Delikatessen Playlist out of oblivion and writing about it, I thought it might be interesting to see whether I had made any other playlists “back in the old days.” During the (early) 2000s, I listened to a huge amount of music, before my taste partly evolved towards some other musicians and styles of jazz. I thought about it for a while and remembered that around 2007–2009 I had several interesting activities that preceded the launch of Jazzin.rs.

In 2007, my friend Nenad Borović, who was working at the Student Centre in Zagreb at the time, asked me to join the Radio SC project – a non-profit radio station operating within the institution, under the ambitious and creative slogan “Kultura promjene” (Culture of Change), which applied to all of the Centre’s cultural activities in those years. Alongside several interviews I did that year at the N.O. Jazz Festival (with William Parker, Satoko Fujii and Wayne Horvitz) for the festival production, we agreed that I would create weekly jazz playlists where I would have the freedom to be as avant-garde as I wanted. In other words, to stick to my own musical taste, which corresponded with the kind of jazz concerts SC was presenting at the time.

The playlists started in March 2008 and, by a happy coincidence, I opened a blog where I kept track of them, along with information about the albums the tracks came from and their release years. Since I was also writing at the time for the then very popular Serbian website Popboks, I also posted links to those reviews. And then, when the editor rejected my proposal to interview Otomo Yoshihide because it wasn’t commercial enough (no hard feelings – I understand the laws of the market), I thought I could also use the blog to publish texts I couldn’t manage to “sell” to the editorial team but still felt deserved to appear somewhere. Once I already had playlists, reviews, interviews, etc. on the blog, the next natural step was to gather a few like-minded people and launch a jazz website at the end of 2009.

I called the blog “Jazz, Glamour and Discourse,” which was a reference to a chapter in Viktor Pelevin’s book Empire V called “Glamour and Discourse.” By now, I can’t even remember whether there was any deeper meaning to it or whether I simply liked the way it sounded.

Anyway, these days I went through the many playlists I had published and checked how much they correspond with my taste today. Among these musicians are several of my all-time favourites, such as William Parker, Dave Douglas, MMW, Steven Bernstein and others, whom I still listen to with undiminished enthusiasm. But I also noticed that there was a lot of music I no longer remember. Or some that simply faded into the background. There was quite a lot of free jazz, or post-bop with a free flavour, this or that kind of avant-garde music that was pretty loud and frenetic. Or, if it was slower, it often had to have some “unexpected twist” or be “ironic” according to the criteria of conventional musical beauty. I remember listening to music very loudly (which is increasingly rare these days).

I had shows on Radio SC for about a year, although there were quite a few summer and holiday breaks, so you couldn’t really say it was particularly long-lived. I went through the lists and listened to some of the tracks again, then picked around thirty to dig out of oblivion. The Mixcloud link is at the bottom of the post, but before that, let’s revisit each track one by one.

AND NOW, FINALLY, THE PLAYLIST.

Mary Halvorson Trio - Old Nine Two Six Four Two Dies (No.10) (Dragon’s Head, 2008)

The first track from Mary Halvorson’s first album, a guitarist whose style I fell in love with back when she played in Trevor Dunn’s Trio Convulsant and whose albums I still follow with great pleasure today.

Billy Bang - ReflectionS (Vietnam: Reflections, 2005)

I first heard violinist Billy Bang on William Parker’s album Scrapbook, which I still consider a masterpiece. He was a complete revelation to me. Still, later on I never really found enough time to get into his work as a bandleader. Vietnam: Reflections was one of his albums I loved the most, but which I had meanwhile forgotten amid the flood of other music. Nice to be reminded of it.

Kidd Jordan, William Parker, Hamid Drake – Forever (Palm of Soul, 2006)

I was obviously heavily influenced by the Parker-Drake universe, and that was how Kidd Jordan made his way onto my playlist.

Happy Apple - Youth Oriented (Youth Oriented, 2003)

After I fell in love with The Bad Plus, I went through and found all the projects the band members had worked on. This was the band drummer Dave King was playing in at the time.

Michael Dessen Trio - Restless Years (Between Shadow and Space, 2008)

Around those years I started closely following the activities of the Clean Feed label, and this was one of the albums that got under my skin that year – I can tell from the fact that I also wrote a review of the album.

Okkyung Lee - On A Windy Day (Nihm, 2005)

Experimental extravagance, but also something that I feel would intrigue me today if I were hearing it for the first time. I’ll have to return to the album.

Gutbucket - Lift Cover, Pull Cord (Dry Humping the American Dream, 2004)

For several years, Gutbucket were my absolute favourite band, with their combination of punk, jazz, klezmer and who knows what else. It’s hard to single out any track as the “best,” but this album as a whole left me speechless, completely blown away when I first heard it.

Louis Sclavis - Lost on the way (Lost on the Way, 2009)

Louis Sclavis is an interesting musician in every era in which he has played. What I find particularly interesting about him is that I have the impression he was never especially “trending,” to use today’s language. He has simply been consistently and persistently releasing excellent music for decades without too much fuss. Even though he is on ECM, I have never thought of him as a stylist in that direction; he has always been distinctive and authentic.

Ted Reichman - Distortion 1 (Emigre, 2003)

Ted Reichman played in earlier incarnations of The Claudia Quintet, the group led by John Hollenbeck. This was his solo project, which at the time found a home on Zorn’s Tzadik label.

Luis Lopes Humanization 4tet - Long March (For Frida Kahlo) (Humanization 4tet, 2008)

Another musician I discovered by following the Clean Feed catalogue.

The Claudia Quintet - They Point...Glance...Whisper...Then Snicker... (Semi-formal, 2005)

I mentioned John Hollenbeck a moment ago, a drummer and composer whose music I still follow today. Over the past couple of decades, he has turned out to have a remarkably consistent, great career in which every new project represented an interesting evolution in his expression. The Claudia Quintet still sounds as fresh and modern today as it did 20 years ago.

Louis Sclavis – Bakiff (Ellington on the Air, 1992)

Everything I wrote about him above applies here too 😊

Michael Bates – Fellini (Clockwise, 2008)

Released on Dave Douglas’s Greenleaf label, so that was almost certainly how I discovered this musician, whom I later somewhat forgot about. I also wrote a review of the album Clockwise back then, so I conclude that it was one of my favourite albums of that year. Today it sounds good enough to remind myself of it and perhaps play the whole album again.

Bill Frisell – Struggle (History, Mistery, 2008)

Wonderful, wonderful music. Perhaps even Bill Frisell’s best album ever.

Bobby Previte & The New Bump - There Was Something In My Drink (Set the Alarm for Monday, 2008)

There was another excellent album of his, Pan Atlantic, released a year later. Great to be reminded of it.

Dave Douglas Keystone - Married Life (Moonshine, 2007)

An absolutely fantastic line-up and an outstanding album. Dave Douglas is a legend. Over the following decades I didn’t always love all of his albums, but I’m fascinated by his consistency and his choice of musicians for the new bands he puts together.

Steven Bernstein – Naphtali (Diaspora Suite, 2008)

Alongside his work with his main band Sexmob and a number of other projects, Steven Bernstein released a fantastic series of albums on the Tzadik label during the 2000s: Diaspora Blues, Diaspora Soul and Diaspora Suite. The album titles and the fact that he released this series of albums with Zorn point towards a specific interpretation of Jewish musical tradition in a contemporary context, but also through crossovers within certain genre frameworks. The title Suite itself doesn’t suggest the stylistic framework clearly enough, but here all of it sounded in a certain Bitches Brew mode, with an impressive level of psychedelia. Great album.

Francesco Bearzatti Tinissima Quartet – Russia (Suite for Tina Modotti, 2008)

At the time I listened to more American than European jazz, and saxophonist Francesco Bearzatti is exactly the kind of artist I could fall in love with today if I were hearing him for the first time in 2026. He played in Belgrade a long time ago, which is how I became familiar with his work, and later returned to Pančevo with this line-up, while on another occasion he came to the Belgrade Jazz Festival with Giovanni Guidi.

Mostly Other People Do The Killing - Two Boot Jacks (This is our Moosic, 2008)

The most hilarious band of that era, featuring two extraordinarily talented horn players, Peter Evans and Jon Irabagon.

Dennis Gonzalez Jnaana Septet - Portugal (For Linda Sharrock) (The Gift of Discernment, 2008)

Dennis Gonzalez would probably be classified today in some “spiritual jazz” category, except that in his version it isn’t “beautiful ambient music” but also brings a dose of something slightly more dangerous, otherworldly.

Chris Speed - Skipping Really High (Iffy, 2000)

Chris Speed is one of those musicians whose style I have always really loved and who has always sounded different to me from every other saxophonist (or clarinettist) on the scene. I mostly liked him as a sideman, but there was this one album in his discography that I paid particular attention to back in the day.

Vijay Iyer - Comin’ Up (Tragicomic, 2008)

Today Vijay Iyer is a canonical, major name in contemporary jazz, and the album Tragicomic already presented him in the style that is recognisably his today.

Wayne Horvitz - Disingenuous firefight (Forever, 2002)

I first heard of Wayne Horvitz thanks to the fact that he was a member of Zorn’s legendary Naked City line-up. When I went to the N.O. Jazz Festival in Zagreb in 2007, Horvitz performed with a chamber ensemble completely different from anything associated with Zorn’s universe – I hadn’t been keeping up. But I liked it, so I dug around a little to see what he had been releasing during the 2000s.

Todd Sickafoose - Paper Trombones (Tiny Resistors, 2008)

I could somewhat compare this album to what Bill Frisell represented in the jazz world – a combination of Americana and blues with contemporary jazz in an accessible and beautiful context, but with enough of a distinctive authorial stamp.

Ras Moshe Quartet - Far Sight (Transcendence, 2007)

A kind of Coltrane-style jazz from that period.

Bill Frisell - Struggle Part 2 (History, Mistery, 2008)

Bill Frisell on repeat, because why not.

Anderskov Accident - Fibo ludo (Unity of Action, 2006)

The same year they released the album, Danish band Anderskov Accident played in the midnight programme of the Belgrade Jazz Festival. Since I didn’t have enough money to see all the concerts (and I still wasn’t a jazz journalist), I had to choose carefully which concerts to buy tickets for, so I went for this excellent post-neo-fusion-something. I even bought the CD after the concert.

Kamikaze Ground Crew - Diamonds Are Just Glass (The Scenic Route, 1990)

I had completely forgotten about this band. Most likely, I wanted to get hold of and listen to every album Steven Bernstein had ever played on, including this one, where he was still quite young. But let’s say I liked this band in the same way I liked Roy Nathanson’s Sotto Voce, which came much later – vocal jazz with spirit and wit, which manages to sound fun and “ironic” while at the same time being conventionally beautiful.

William Parker - Lights of Lake George (Double Sunrise Over Neptune, 2008)

The grand finale of this playlist, an epic 27-minute track by one of my favourite musicians of all time. “The specially commissioned world premiere of Double Sunrise Over Neptune took place on June 19, 2007, opening night of Vision Festival XII,” according to the official information. And a little more information: “On “Lights of Lake George”, Sangeeta Bandyopadhyay sings the mantra Surya Pranam, and then a Tarana – an improvised composition of Persian devotional syllables”. Spectacular.

THE COMPLETE PLAYLIST IS HERE

I’m writing this piece on a Friday, when a large number of new jazz releases traditionally appear in stores and on streaming services. I’ve been hearing and reading about some of the releases from today’s Randomizer for weeks (and even months) in advance. Some albums were released earlier as well. Some I’m hearing for the first time now. What they all have in common is that I like them at least initially, on first impression, and that more careful listening still lies ahead. When the time comes for the year-end lists, I’ll have a clearer picture of which albums have “stood the test of time”, even if that time is measured only in weeks and months.

I’ve already written several times about releases published by the Budapest label BMC Records, which has been a major discovery for me. As I write this, I’m listening for the first time to the album Black Sea Songs II, released by Sanem Kalfa (vocals, cello), George Dumitriu (viola, guitar, electronics) and Joachim Badenhorst (clarinet, bass clarinet). This is chamber music that I perhaps wouldn’t call “jazz” in the narrow sense of the word, but it contains elements of jazz improvisation, classical composition, and a folk sensibility connected to the Black Sea region. Although the musicians come from different parts of the world, what they have in common is that they live and work in the Netherlands, a country that is a “melting pot” for contemporary European cross-genre music, which can also be felt in their highly creative approach to loosely understood references and genres.

The second album I recommend this week is the freshly released Floating by the new quartet of Emile Parisien, a soprano saxophonist whose work I’ve been following for 10–15 years and whose albums I always enjoy. I particularly like his duo with accordionist Vincent Peirani, while concerts by his regular quartet have always been a real spectacle. For weeks now, ACT Music has been promoting his new band, which we can freely call an all-star lineup featuring pianist Yaron Herman, bassist Linda May Han Oh and percussionist Prabou Edouard. This band sits somewhere between his intimate duo and his wild quartet, while Parisien himself is always reliable and recognizable as an instrumentalist.

This week’s discovery for me is seasoned pianist Gisela Horat, whom I hadn’t heard of before, but who appeared on my radar thanks to my growing interest in the Swiss label Unit Records. She has just released the album “Trio Solo”, which in practice means that it is a double album – on one she performs with a trio, and on the other without the band. Although the solo album is interesting as well, my attention was particularly drawn to the trio section with Simon Iten on bass and Samuel Büttiker on drums and percussion. This is an album of minimalist and restrained improvisation, relying more on small gestures and interactions and a commitment to texture and atmosphere than on excursions into ecstatic crescendos. And I quite like that, although more extensive listening and impressions are still to come.

On the other hand, saxophonist and clarinetist Andrew D’Angelo has been a familiar and dear name to me for decades, although mostly in the context of bands he has worked with. I have also already developed enormous trust in guitarist Jakob Bro’s Loveland label. So I approached the album BCDELUXE with a positive bias, and my expectations were met. To be fair, this isn’t an album I’ll want to obsessively listen to on repeat, given its distinctly fragmentary-minimalist structure and the fact that it is a solo album of bass clarinet miniatures. But the recordings are convincing, and for now I’m finding enjoyment in them.

Several more potentially interesting releases have accumulated on my radar, but I simply haven’t had time to listen to them, so I believe next week’s Randomizer will be quite substantial.

On the festival scene, it’s time to mention N.O. Jazz Festival, which has been of immeasurable importance to me both personally and professionally. I first went there in 2005 and attended the festival for several years until it was discontinued due to funding problems, after which it was revived a few years ago in a somewhat more stripped-down, but no less high-quality form.

The curator and organizer of this festival, held in Zagreb (Croatia), is Mate Škugor, something of a legend in the region and an organizer/promoter who has played an important role in shaping the musical taste of several generations of fans of avant-garde sound (not only jazz). From the 1990s to the present day, he has organized the Žedno Uho and N.O. Jazz festival in Zagreb, followed by Terraneo in Šibenik and SuperUho in Primošten (on the seaside, near Šibenik), where, for example, I saw Marc Ribot and Colin Stetson in 2019.

Anyway – this year the festival will feature The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis (November 10), Spike Fuck + Gordan Glad (November 11), and Artifacts Trio (Nicole Mitchell, Tomeka Reid and Mike Reed) and Eksterminator ‘81 (a project by the tireless Croatian keyboardist Toni Starešinić) on November 13. Quality guaranteed!

When we talk about the jazz scene in Serbia, a special place belongs to musicians from Vojvodina, the northern Serbian province that is culturally distinctive as a multicultural and multiconfessional environment. A large part of the population is made up of the Hungarian minority, but Slovaks, Croats, and members of other nations originating from the surrounding countries are also well represented. In that sense, we can also speak of a somewhat different cultural environment compared to central and southern Serbia, but also compared to Belgrade as the capital and largest city in the region.

In the context of jazz, this means that for decades Vojvodina has been more avant-garde than the Belgrade scene, and has also had a strong tradition of musicians and events operating outside the usual mainstream coordinates.

For example, the fantastic “Jazz, improvised music…” festival ran for decades in the small town of Kanjiža in the far north of the country, hosting, among others, Sam Rivers, Charles Gayle, Hamid Drake, Joëlle Léandre… and many other legendary names in avant-garde music and improvisation. Violist and composer Szilard Mezei, whom I have written about here on several occasions, lives and works in Senta, but since he leads several (often large) ensembles, more or less all Vojvodina musicians interested in free jazz improvisation and avant-garde composition gravitate towards him. There is also Jasna Jovićević from Subotica, whose current album I wrote about in the early days of Eurojazzist.

Novi Sad is the capital of Vojvodina and the centre of its cultural life, where a new generation of musicians has emerged over the past 15–20 years. Today, the best known in avant-garde circles is pianist Marina Džukljev, who, for example, performed with Michael Griener and Christian Weber on the main stage of Jazzfestival Saalfelden this year, and is very active in international collaborations, mostly in Austria and Slovenia.

But for our story, we will focus on two musicians – saxophonist Predrag Okiljević and drummer Lav Kovač.

Last decade, together with bassist Marko Čurčić and saxophonist Vojislav Savkov, they formed Dragon’s Fuel, a band whose first few years stylistically evoked British neo-jazz-rock (Polar Bear, Led Bib, Acoustic Ladyland, etc.), before they later began to evolve stylistically. But even more importantly, they founded the informal collective Horz, which also spawned the Horz Music label, through which they began releasing a host of different albums – with this band, as well as in various duo, solo, trio, or band combinations.

Horz became the first jazz collective in Serbia not to rely on the usual model of chasing an “official” and “reputable” label, but instead decided to take matters into their own hands. This gave them greater freedom and spontaneity in presenting their music and trying out new musical ideas, which also significantly contributed to their musical maturity.

Lav Kovač began releasing albums on piano or keyboards as well, while Predrag Okiljević also recorded albums in quite diverse formations. In this way, he developed an interesting playing style that sits somewhere on the fine line between free jazz and the breezy, melodic style of Charles Lloyd: he never overdoes the overtones or fast solos, but carefully measures out his phrases and creates micro-units from them, trying to function within the appropriate musical context. On the other hand, he also possesses that primal skill of tenor saxophone playing, with a rich, deep tone whose associations historically reach back to Coltrane or even Coleman Hawkins.

Finally, we come to their current album “Live at Kachara”, recorded at the studio of the same name in the village of Bukovac near Novi Sad. Without too much hype or advance promotion, the album was simply released on their Bandcamp page with minimal information and accompanying text, and is structured around two long pieces simply titled “Part One” and “Part Two”.

At this point, we might note that Lav and Predrag are not particularly interested in self-promotion beyond the usual posts on their private social media channels, which we could romantically view as the approach of “true artists”. On the other hand, I feel that their music can stand alongside what I see on stages across Europe, and I regret that they do little or nothing in that direction.

The moment I first played the album, two associations came to mind. The first was a concert by saxophonist Lee Konitz and pianist Dan Tepfer at the Belgrade Jazz Festival in 2013. It was an intimate and unpretentious encounter between a legendary musician and his considerably younger companion, one that perfectly combined the historical dimension of jazz with a contemporary spirit, although Tepfer was very much attuned to the context and Konitz’s stature. My second association was with Charles Lloyd and Jason Moran’s album “Hagar’s Song”, released the same year, again in the context of bringing together a saxophone legend and a young pianist in his prime.

On “Live at Kachara”, we hear two musicians in their mid-to-late thirties, so clearly this is not a meeting of “youth and experience”, but in terms of style and the way they approach their instruments, I felt that vibe. It is as if both of them have “taken their foot off the gas” a little compared to their regular projects, sounding like the most refined American ballad jazz, occasionally stepping outside this framework into somewhat looser improvisations (though by no means free in the usual sense).

Over the course of these long pieces, they actually play several shorter thematic units, occasionally punctuated by applause from the friendly studio audience. They move from classic structures in which one musician solos while the other accompanies, to occasional moments when we hear Kovač or Okiljević unaccompanied. These isolated solo moments flow gently, effortlessly, and without hurry.

In this way, the album creates the effect of an intimate encounter between two musicians and friends, rather than a carefully conceived and studio-polished release that had been prepared and thought through for a long time. And I have to say that this psychological effect is just as pleasant as the music itself, which is very rarely “edgy” or contemporary, and more often embodies the universal values of jazz in a duo format. This album can be a good starting point for further exploration of the work of these two (still) young musicians from Novi Sad, but it is also one of the most successful albums released on the Horz label so far.

Historically, we most often associate the sax-drums duo format with the era of John Coltrane. All later iterations have been most successful when they had some kind of reference to the Coltrane-Ali duo or, more generally, the free jazz of that decade. However, times change, and of course the format itself is not tied to a particular style. Especially in an era of sophisticated post-production and the crossover between acoustic and electronic music.

The album here i am no i, released yesterday by Patrick Shiroishi & Jason Nazary on the We Jazz label, which is very dear to me, is a good example of an album that takes the best from history and places the performers’ and composers’ playfulness within a contemporary production context. We hear a multilayered saxophone sound, occasional beats or electronic effects, but above all two musicians who understand each other well. At times they sound like an entire band; like Otomo Yoshihide, for instance, in those moments when he reflects his love for Coleman or Dolphy by creating ecstatic crescendos. I might have a few other references as well – for example, the sound of bands releasing music on International Anthem, which is no coincidence considering that Jason Nazary played with Jaimie Branch and dedicates this album to her. I’m only on my first listen, but there will be many more.

Kuhn Fu is a completely different band, one we have mentioned here through my conversation with double bassist Esat Ekincioglu. A few years ago they played at Radio Belgrade’s Studio 6, which was when we first met, and the key figure in this group is guitarist Christian Kühn. In addition to playing guitar, Kühn is also a vocalist when needed, while as a frame of reference for the band I might suggest Flat Earth Society or the ICP Orchestra. But perhaps even more important is the composer’s distinctive theatrical vision, with historical roots stretching from Brecht and Weill to various more contemporary indie/alternative evocations of “twisted yet accessible” music with a strong narrative charge. Their latest album GamGumSupon features an expanded version of the band, with the horn section reinforced to the max and now numbering five musicians – among them a saxophonist very dear to me, John Dikeman, as well as heavyweight Frank Gratkowski. Sounds promising.

Saxophonist Jack Wylie is a musician I’m very fond of and is known for his work with the British band Portico Quartet – I particularly love their early album Isla, although I continued listening to them when they turned somewhat more explicitly towards electronics. Later, musicians from this band would go on to release albums in various line-ups and projects, among which my current favourite is bassist Milo Fitzpatrick’s Vega Trails. In any case, Wylie has now ventured into solo territory and released Eternal Spring, the first album under his own name, featuring the aforementioned Fitzpatrick as well as drummer Duncan Bellamy, alongside several other guests, the most prominent name among them being Polish composer and pianist Hania Rani. In that sense, this is also a collaborative project involving Gondwana Records, the label that brings together all these artists and aesthetics. Wylie’s album, quite expectedly and naturally, sounds like something from the “Portico universe”, but within a different, yet elaborated and creative arranging context.

Jazz across Europe

The Belgrade Jazz Festival is, both historically and today, the most important jazz festival in Serbia. Over the past 15–20 years, it has gone through various phases in terms of organisational aspects and budget, which has fluctuated considerably depending on personnel policies and circumstances within the city administration. Throughout all these years, artistic director Vojislav Pantić and producer Dragan Ambrozić have managed to maintain the continuity of a high-quality programme thanks to their knowledge of the scene and excellent management skills: I have often joked (though not without reason) that they put together better programmes when they had less money. Because then the programme would feature more avant-garde artists and exciting upcoming artists, rather than “established stars”.

This year is one of those with a more modest budget and more creativity in putting the programme together. Among the names I’m more familiar with are The Messthetics & James Brandon Lewis and Chicago Underground Duo, alongside several locally important performers. There are also a few bands I’m hearing about for the first time on this occasion, such as the Arun Ramamurthy Trio, which by chance was the first one I checked out, and I already like what I hear: violin in the foreground and a combination of a “fresh approach to age-old South Indian Carnatic music”, as the band puts it, with what I perceive as contemporary USA jazz. It looks like it will be a good festival, and the complete programme is HERE.

At the same time, the Jazz&Wine of Peace Festival is taking place in the Italian town of Cormons, featuring Goran Kajfeš Subtropic Arkestra, Peter Evans & Craig Taborn, Shake Stew, Alfa Mist, Isaiah Collier “Plays Coltrane”, Laura Jurd and many other excellent performers. The programme is excellent, and I seriously considered going to this festival – in the end, I had to give up on the idea for certain personal reasons. Fortunately, I have BJF happening at the same time, so I won’t be deprived of good live jazz, but I hope that in one of the coming years I’ll make it to this genuinely carefully and skilfully curated event.

Finally, I would also like to mention a “small festival” taking place in neighbouring Croatia, in the city of Osijek, relatively close to the Serbian border. The festival is called Kinesis and is being held for only the second time, while this year’s line-up features Italian jazzcore masters Zu, the duo Star Splitter featuring Rob Mazurek and Gabrielle Mitelli, and The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, featuring Mariam Rezaei, Mette Rasmussen, Gabriele Mitelli and Lukas König. Each of these announced bands is worth paying attention to, and the fact that the festival has “only” three concerts does not diminish its value. The festival takes place on October 12, 15 and 16 this year, and posts about the event can be found on the festival’s Facebook page. I wish them many successful years and hope they grow even further (if they want to).

I first heard about clarinetist Wacław Zimpel when the album „The Passsion“ by his then-group Undivided (Bobby Few on piano, Mark Tokar on bass, and Klaus Kugel on drums) won first place in 2010 in a reader’s poll of the influential Free Jazz Blog. I immediately listened to the album because I considered this choice highly significant, but I did not spend much more time with the album. It happens.

But the name stayed in my head. On the Jazzin.rs website, which was very active at the time, my colleagues followed his work closely, and Zimpel’s name would come up whenever a new release appeared. I don’t remember exactly what I thought during those first listens, but my playlists were constantly filled with a considerable amount of music that we would characterize as „free jazz“ or some freer variation of „post-bop“ music. I was overwhelmed, and whenever some new but similar music appeared, like dozens of other albums, my patience would wear thin.

That changed when I heard the album „Stone Fog“. Hand on heart, stylistically this was not an overly „different“ album, but I found the playing quite convincing. An initial connection was established, which I definitely deepened when I heard the album „Seven Lines“ (2013) by the Hera group (with special guest Hamid Drake). Here, the direction in which Zimpel was increasingly moving was already obvious: toward implementing minimalism and repetition into his expression, drawing on the aesthetics of American composers as well as his collaboration with the Indian group Sangara.

Somewhere around those years began a spectacular run of outstanding albums, during which Zimpel underwent a musical transition from a „jazz musician“ into something new and different, which over the last 5–6 years would culminate in his turn toward electronics and some new collaborations, that is, a move away from the jazz world in which he left an extraordinary mark.

I met Zimpel in 2016 when we organized his concert at the Nova Festival in Pančevo in 2017 with his then LAM Trio. It was his first visit to Serbia. I remember the concert fondly, although I was already too tired from the organizational aspects of concerts and the constant worry about how everything would go and whether enough people would come to see an „unknown“ musician.

He returned to Serbia several times later, most recently this year, when we had a nice conversation and reminisced about the old days. He performed solo on electronics and clarinet at the underground club Dim, in his new guise and with a new audience compared to the one that used to follow him.

That was when I thought that one day I would look back at my favorite Zimpel albums, and that moment has finally arrived.

Wacław Zimpel Quartet: Stone Fog (For Tune Records, 2013)

This is an album on which we are still listening to Zimpel „the jazz musician“ – and where the playing potency of the entire band is equally in focus alongside its concept. This is a kind of „introspective free“ that does not burst with explosions but carefully doses its dynamic rises, while in a couple of longer pieces we can also hear hints of Zimpel – the minimalist. I particularly liked the interaction and the beautiful rapport with pianist Krzysztof Dys, who would later appear as his collaborator in the LAM Trio.

Hera with special guest Hamid Drake – Seven Lines (Improvised Music Series, 2013)

Of course, the name Hamid Drake caught my attention, in addition to the fact that I had heard this was another „Zimpel band“. Here I would also hear guitarist Raphael Rogiński for the first time, a musician who would return to Serbia and even collaborate with musicians from my part of the world in various incarnations.

The first two tracks, „Sounds of Balochistan“ and „Roofs of Kyoto“, last 17 and 15 minutes respectively and are already spectacles in themselves, bringing together the finest traditions of free jazz, repetition, and various global musical traditions (the Bandcamp page for the album says that “Seven Lines includes Polish folk songs and Jewish klezmer, but also music from the Far East, Sufi chants, blues sprinkles, African funk or free jazz elements“. Or – one could say that it builds on the tradition of free jazz which, in the late sixties and early seventies, began turning toward Asia and Africa, but in an original and contemporary guise. Beautiful.

Wacław Zimpel – Lines (Instant Classic, 2016)

This album is a kind of solo statement on which Zimpel plays Bb clarinet, alto clarinet, bass clarinet, khaen, Hammond organ, Fender Rhodes, drawing on the tradition of American minimalism in the spirit of Steve Reich. One could say that this album is a „corner stone“ for everything that would follow and a kind of paradigm of his expression, even of his later electronic phase.

LAM (Instant Classic, 2016)

This album is also conceptually minimalist, but based on a more classical instrumental structure featuring clarinet, piano, and drums. We could also experience it as Zimpel’s (successful) attempt to carry out his conceptual ideas and new interests within the framework of an apparent jazz format. In that sense, this album excellently combines the gradual dynamic gradations and climaxes characteristic of repetitive music with the potent improvisations of a very tight-knit jazz band.

Zimpel/Ziołek (Instant Classic, 2017)

On this album we hear a fun Zimpel detour into a combination of alternative rock and pop with avant-jazz-minimalism and electronics. You really have to be a master to sound layered and complex while at the same time remaining catchy and accessible. I have the impression that Zimpel succeeded in doing so on this album, and did it very fluidly and naturally, without creating any rough seams. Here we also have „indie“ vocal music and instrumental repetition, intersecting and intertwining in a perfect way.

Wacław Zimpel - Massive Oscillations (Ongehoord, 2020)

Another solo album (with a couple of guests) in which Zimpel turns more clearly toward electronics, while nevertheless retaining a „neo-retro“ analogue flavor alongside electronic and synth-like sounds that you might, for example, hear in Vangelis or some of the legends of that kind and caliber. Here it is clear that the clarinet retreats into the background, while the sound wall of synths, electronics, and beats takes center stage. And everything works flawlessly.

Wacław Zimpel - Ebbing in the tide (2020)

A 49-minute solo piece in album form. „The piece uses advanced processing techniques - developed specially for him by James Holden - to transform a single clarinet line into an other-worldly choir of woodwinds“, says the Bandcamp page. If we really had to slap some genre label on it, this would be a record of „ambient music“. Although I would dare say that here we are listening to the „classic Zimpel“, who could be a reference point unto himself. „Zimpel-like music“.

After the turn of the millennium, collaborations with James Holden, solo ventures, as well as performances with the Indian group Saagara followed, the latter being significantly responsible for defining Zimpel’s sound. Here, four musicians from the Carnatic musical tradition of southern India perform with him: percussionists Giridhar Udupa (ghatam), Aggu Baba (khanjira) and K Raja (thavil), and violinist Mysore N. Karthik. At the time when I fell in love with Zimpel, this was not an interesting band to me, but as over the years I have become increasingly open to Indian music, perhaps now is the right moment to reevaluate this group as well, which released its latest album in 2024.

Zimpel is only 43 years old and has many more years of a great career ahead of him. Since he is a musician in constant evolution, I am sure he will release many more interesting records that transcend genres. I see the period from 2010 to 2020 in his career as spectacular, and I gladly return to it, again and again.

A couple of weeks ago, on these pages, I contemplated what makes a good and meaningful (jazz) playlist, from the perspective of someone for whom this is neither a particular strength nor an area of specialization. I’ve always been more inclined to complete albums, but I completely understand why radio or DJ playlists can be seductive and fun. But can a playlist of “uncompromising contemporary jazz” be “fun” in the same way as DJ sets of some kind of “dance jazz” or “jazzy” music?

Eleven years ago, my partner Monika and I launched Nova Festival in our town Pančevo (and a few “guest cities”), bringing together artists working in “new music” across different genres. In the first few years, I was particularly happy that we organized concerts by the duo Kaja Draksler and Susana Santos Silva, Waclaw Zimpel with his then-current LAM Trio, Gabbeh with Golnar Shahyar, Mona Matbou Riahi and Manu Mayr, a number of local artists, etc. Whenever there was a festival opening or some promotional event, or whenever we needed some music before the concerts started and after the concert programme had ended, Monika would tell me, “put some music together!” and I would make playlists as best I could.

What I particularly liked here was that I didn’t feel the need to pander too much to “general taste”, since the festival was more or less avant-garde anyway. But I did try to make the music at least minimally melodic and not completely atonal free jazz.

However, on one occasion we organized a promo event in Belgrade as part of a series of events called Delicatessen Monday, at the alternative venue Cultural Centre Grad. Delicatessen Monday was an event featuring a dinner based around a particular kind of cuisine (exotic, vegan, national, etc.), accompanied by a suitable party, which many festivals and organizations around 2016–2017 used as a promotional event for their activities. Nova Festival happily jumped on that bandwagon because Delicatessen Monday was cool by every measure, and we needed promotion among Belgrade’s alternative crowd—that is, the people we were specifically targeting and inviting to come to our festival.

Here I couldn’t get away with ten songs playing before the concert started; I actually needed to spend a little more time working on the playlist. On the other hand, that was also impossible because we were constantly balancing our day jobs with the important organizational aspects of running a festival, so all I could do was frantically throw songs into a folder that same morning and somehow arrange them in a way that made sense for the event ahead.

I still had this playlist saved in a folder, so I dug it out, went through it, and then uploaded it. One of the reasons I’m bringing it back from oblivion is the fact that on blogs and websites like this we are constantly rushing towards the new. We recommend an endless amount of new and current music, make best-of selections of the finest albums released in 2026, and so on. At the same time, we look back at “legendary” historical albums that changed the history of jazz and music in general.

But what about music released, say, in 2012 or 2015? Of course, many of us privately listen to albums released in some random year between 2000 and today. But do we actually recommend those albums, actively write about them? Those who heard them, heard them; we move on, rushing towards newer and newer releases, and who cares about Get The Blessing’s 2015 album “Astronautilus”. For example.

I titled this folder “Delicatessen Playlist” and occasionally played it in the car on various trips, because the list worked quite nicely in that context too, and now I’m bringing it back to life here as well, with a few accompanying comments.

Nine Horses – Money for all (Money for all, 2007)

I suppose my logic was that the playlist had to start with something cool but unobtrusive. Basically, there are never any people around during the first song anyway—it’s usually just the organizing team and a couple of people doing something—but you have to start somewhere. David Sylvian’s band from the 2000s, in which he takes a break from his avant-garde albums, seemed like a good intro.

Get the Blessing – Phaenomena (Astronautilus, 2015)

This is an upbeat track that nicely captures the spirit of British neo-jazz-rock from the period between 2005 and 2015. Short, clear and fun. I often played it in various intro/outro playlists for events. Get the Blessing had played in Serbia, so they were familiar enough to the interested local audience, which made it a win-win situation. They also helped the Serbian band Eyot a lot in their career, which is a separate story for another occasion.

Henry Butler, Steven Bernstein and the Hot 9 - Viper’s
Drag (Viper’s Drag, 2014)

A hilariously fun New Orleans jazz-blues track that opens the album of the same name. Naturally, it was particularly fun for me because I’m a fan of Steven Bernstein, and I love the way he makes tradition modern and exciting while retaining its original spirit.

Mathew Shipp – Space Ship (Nu Bop, 2002)

This was one of the first Matthew Shipp albums I heard, from the period when he had a couple of albums flirting with electronics. From today’s perspective, this strikes me as a poor and forced choice for a playlist, but the album is an interesting extravagance in Shipp’s career. I once asked William Parker about these electro-jazz albums he also played on, but he waved the whole thing away as if it wasn’t really his “thing”—but hey, the producers came up with the idea of doing something unusual.

Fish in Oil - FNR-Y (Drnch, 2013)

Local eclectics Fish in Oil nod slightly towards the ex-Yu aesthetic in (film) music on this track, so there’s an implicit local reference, but this retro “Partisan” approach sounds pretty fun.

Polar Bear – Beartown (Held on the Tips of Fingers, 2005)

Another gem of British neo-jazz-alternative-rock eclecticism from that period. Legendary bass line, followed by ecstatic pathos… a real hit.

Dave Douglas – Just Another Murder (Keystone, 2005)

This album meant a lot to me at the time, and once, when I was pretty broke, I travelled to Zagreb just to see a concert by Douglas’s then-new sextet. Jamie Saft played keyboards on the sextet’s first album, while DJ Olive played some fantastic solos on the turntable. “Just Another Murder” isn’t my favourite song on the album, but it is the most upbeat in this context, which is why I chose it.

Oddjob – Palancio (Klint, 2010)

A band featuring trumpeter Goran Kajfeš, who today is one of my favourite trumpeters and musicians in general. Back then I didn’t know who he was; I simply liked the band. The album consists of covers of themes from Clint Eastwood films and is “fun” by design, with a good beat and seductive melody, so it flowed nicely from the songs I had chosen up to that point.

William Parker - Song of Hope (Raining on the Moon, 2002)

At this point in creating the playlist, I probably thought I needed something vocal as well, but I didn’t want to make too many compromises. Leena Conquest sounds powerful on this track, which is perhaps a shade too long and maybe slightly out of step with the “vibe of the evening”, but I didn’t give a damn. I’d make the same choice again today, just to “break up” the atmosphere a little.

Roy Nathanson – Sunny (Sotto Voce, 2006)

This is a fantastic album by the legendary saxophonist (and here also singer) Roy Nathanson, whom I started listening to thanks to his previous career in The Lounge Lizards. Everyone plays and everyone sings, while Napoleon Maddox is there for the beatbox rhythm. “Sunny” is an obvious choice as a cover of a hugely popular and well-known song, in one of the most entertaining versions I’ve heard. Certainly the one most to my taste.

Eyot – Druids (Similarity, 2014)

I mentioned the local band Eyot a little earlier in the paragraph about Get the Blessing, and also previously in my piece about Serbian jazz. This “post-jazz” track brings the dynamics of the playlist down a little; it sounds measured and repetitive. I suppose my idea was that the ears needed to “rest” after a few more intense pieces.

James Brandon Lewis - Buffalo Braves: Black Ark (Days of FreeMan,
2015)

That year JLB released an album inspired by hip-hop, naturally coloured by his recognizable saxophone in a stripped-down trio format. The track moves at a calmer pace, but is highly effective, with just the right balance of melody and instrumental explication.

The Kandinsky Effect – Petit Loup (Somnambulist, 2015)

Here’s an album I’ve pretty much forgotten about today. I used to play this track on various playlists and at the time it seemed like a good choice. From today’s perspective, it feels a little “off” in terms of how I fitted it in, but it is what it is.

Hazmat Modine - Two Forty Seven (Cicada, 2011)

Here I jump out of the pattern and into “alternative blues”. I don’t follow that scene too closely, but someone recommended the band to me back then and I really loved the whole album. Perhaps mostly because of the creative approach to harmonica, which departs from blues conventions, but also simply because of the excellent, accessible songs with a good, cheerful and slightly humorous atmosphere.

Mulatu Astatke and The Heliocentrics – Addis Black Window (Inspiration Information, Volume 3).

We remember how Mulatu “exploded” after his music appeared on the soundtrack to Jarmusch’s “Broken Flowers”. The entire album is fantastic, the track is great, it works wonderfully on a playlist… everything is as it should be.

Scotty Hard – St. Claire Hospital (Scotty Hard’s Radical Reconstructive Surgery, 2006)

Another electro-jazz extravaganza from the Thirsty Ear label, featuring both Matthew Shipp and John Medeski in a truly unusual combination. This track, however, has quite a good beat, so it still strikes me as a decent choice for the playlist, even though it has its own “edge” and isn’t exactly for everyone’s ears. But as I said, there was no need to “adapt” all the time anyway; the point was also to convey the essence of what Nova Festival represented.

Tom Waits- Talking at the same time (Bad as Me, 2011)

I’ve been a longtime Tom Waits fan, and I found his then-current album “Bad as Me” hugely entertaining—perhaps not among the best of his career, but certainly very lively and relatively accessible to people who aren’t die-hard fans of his music.

Strings & Tympani – Folllow (Hypen, 2016)

Drummer Øyvind Hegg-Lunde and guitarist Stephan Meidell “use improvisation as a tool to create catchy and rythmic music mixing influences from world music, jazz and lo-fi pop”, as the Bandcamp page says. This is a track with a beat, but also a skewed atmosphere that I thought might appeal to fans of Waits’s bolder albums.

Portico Quartet – Spinner (Portico Quartet, 2012)

As you can see from this playlist, I liked the British scene of the time, although in general I wasn’t happy that Portico had moved away from the minimalist repetition of the previous album towards an electronic sound. Whatever the case, I figured it was certainly better for a night-out crowd to hear one of these kinds of tracks.

The Bad Plus – I walk the line (It’s Hard, 2016)

The Bad Plus are absolute masters of entertaining covers with artistic integrity.

Nik Bartsch’s Ronin – Modul 47 (Llyria, 2010)

A brilliant play with tempo that gives an exciting context to minimalist repetition… I’m sure I found a connection here with the previous track, which also has a loose relationship with tempo. I knew no one was going to dance to these two tracks, but the event itself was one where people ate, drank and talked, so perhaps some tone or phrase they heard in the background would intrigue them.

Gettachew Mekuria & The Ex & Friends – Bati (Y’Anbessaw Tezeta, 2012)

For me, this is along the lines of Mulatu Astatke, but for lovers of alternative guitar music. An absolute hit that can work well for people who aren’t interested in “avant-garde jazz”, while at the same time pointing towards a fantastic album that pushes the boundaries of every genre present while remaining accessible and fun.

Plaistow – Mimas (Titan, 2015)

Somewhat in the vein of Ronin, another “repetitive band” whose track here has an uptempo vibe and an unexpected shift in dynamics in the middle. Probably not an ideal choice for this playlist, but still—a great song and a good album.

Thomas De Pourquery – The Perfect Man (Supersonics play Sun Ra, 2014)

I didn’t know about this band until I saw them at the Ljubljana Jazz Festival in 2016, where I was blown away by both the concept and the frontman. Fun and avant-garde in a hilarious combination.

Lucien Dubuis Trio - Hpc1ere (Tovorak, 2005)

This comes from the period when New Yorkers Gutbucket were my favourite band, working along similar punk-rock-jazz lines. A few years later they also recorded an album with Marc Ribot. I don’t remember what happened to them later and they disappeared from my radar, but they have a couple of excellent albums from the 2000s.

Neneh Cherry & The Thing – Accordion (The Cherry
Thing, 2012)

An absolutely brilliant combination of Neneh Cherry and the then all-star trio of Mats Gustafsson, Ingebrigt Håker Flaten and Paal Nilssen-Love. From today’s perspective, I really love this final block of tracks.

Miles Davis – Black Satin (On The Corner, 1972)

One of the rare excursions into historical music. But I love this album and think it works wonderfully for any uptempo playlist, even with all its psychedelic moments. Or precisely because of them.

Sao Paulo Underground - Evetch (Beija Flors Velho E Sujo, 2013)

Rob Mazurek at the peak of his Brazilian phase. Short, catchy and effective.

Vijay Iyer Trio – Hood (Break Stuff, 2015)

Listening back now, “Hood” feels to me like an interruption in a fantastic sequence of well-connected tracks. It’s possible that this was precisely the idea—that I simply needed to step out of one rounded whole and into the next, slightly different one. I had heard “Hood” live at a couple of concerts even before the ECM album came out and already loved it then, while I experienced “Break Stuff” as the culmination of his trio expression. In the context of his music, this is another one of his “hits” for me, naturally from the perspective of contemporary creative music.

Menahan Street Band – Karina (Make the Road by Walking, 2008)

Those were the years when Daptone Records was at its peak, primarily thanks to Sharon Jones and Charles Bradley, while on the instrumental side of the spectrum Menahan Street Band was epic. Soul for the new millennium, grounded in mastery of the “old craft”.

Reut Regev R Time – Madeleine Forever (Exploring The Vibe, 2013)

Fantastic New York jazz. Trombonist Reut Regev had been to Serbia a couple of times around those years, which is how I became familiar with her work, and this album of hers is excellent, with a fantastic contribution from guitarist Jean-Paul Bourelly. I’m glad I was reminded of her work; she had slipped from my memory a little, and I’ll check out what’s happening with her, where she is and what she’s doing now.

Eyot – New Passover (Similarity, 2014)

Another piece by Eyot, this time a little more energetic and one that follows nicely from Reut Regev.

Fire! Orchestra – Ritual, part V (Ritual, 2016)

I’ve written about Fire! Orchestra several times and don’t have anything particularly new to add, except that it is Mats Gustafsson’s best band and, on top of that, absolutely fun in its sumptuous combination of alternative rock and avant-garde jazz.

Tin Hat Trio – Daisy Bell (The Sad Machinery of Spring,
2007)

A wonderful, wonderful band, consisting of clarinetist Ben Goldberg, guitarist (banjo, dobro, etc.) Mark Orton, and Carla Kihlstedt (violin, voice, etc.). A crossover for fans of NYC jazz and Tom Waits.

The Lounge Lizards – Bob and Nico (No Pain For Cakes, 1987)

I was thrilled when I discovered The Lounge Lizards and John Lurie’s music, and for a long time this was my favourite album of theirs. Marc Ribot is there too, but Lurie is still the absolute superstar here—or rather, his musical vision is. “Bob and Nico” has an insane “drunk” atmosphere; it sways and lounges, seductive and charming.

Miles Davis – One and One (On The Corner, 1972)

Another Miles track from the same album; perhaps it’s overkill, but I was probably listening to this album a lot around that time. Either way, I still think it’s a great choice!

Oddjob – Hang ’em High (Clint, 2010)

OK, it looks like by this point I’d grown a little tired of combining different kinds of music, so I reached for bands I’d already included earlier on the list. But no harm done. Another great piece.

Medeski, Martin and Wood – Shack (Friday Night in the Universe, 1995)

This was the first MMW album I heard, and initially I wasn’t particularly impressed by Medeski’s sound. Only later did I fall in love with some of their other albums and become a fan. But there was this one piece here called “Shack”, with an utterly fascinating drum solo by Billy Martin over a simple Medeski phrase. I was, and still am, absolutely blown away by that intro and the way the atmosphere rises from it towards the song’s climax. Masterpiece.

Medeski, Martin & Wood - Broken Mirror (Radiolarians III, 2009)

Here the focus is on the beautiful melody, from one of their better albums of that period.

Medeski, Martin & Wood – Mami Gato (End of the World Party (Just in Case), 2004)

OK, three MMW tracks in a row—I was probably already running out of time to finish the playlist and started taking shortcuts. But there was no way I could leave out “Mami Gato”, an absolute MMW hit with a Latin vibe.

Angles 9 – Compartmentalization (Injuries, 2014)

We bring the pace down and return to the realm of acoustic jazz, namely one of the greatest iterations of Martin Küchen’s ensemble.

Marvin Pontiac – Little Fly (The Legendary Marvin Pontiac - Greatest Hits, 1999)

Probably the craziest joke John Lurie ever pulled, creating the fake identity of a blues singer who ended up in a mental institution, or something like that. Naturally, his voice is very easy to recognize, while his talent for a simple blues and alt-pop song with a dose of (un)healthy humour is equally impressive.

Sex mob – Kitchen (Dime Grind Palace, 2003)

A completely twisted melody and an even more twisted solo by Briggan Krauss. This is one of the tracks that made me fall in love with Sex Mob back in the day, trumpeter Steven Bernstein’s longest-running band.

There was no particular reason why I put this song right at the end. Looking at it now, the total running time of the playlist was 3:25. The event itself lasted around 2–3 hours, but I probably added a little “extra” at the end just in case. Even if we had run out of music, the whole thing would simply have started again on repeat and no one would have minded, or even noticed.

Now that you’ve made it all the way to the end with me, there’s nothing left to do but post the link to the playlist on Mixcloud and offer it up for you to hear. Enjoy!

Delicatessen Playlist on Mixcloud

Ever since the first single announcing the album appeared, I had been eagerly and curiously awaiting Spring Flood. For many years, I have followed (and still follow) the work of Mats Gustafsson’s Fire! Orchestra, in which Mariam Wallentin formed an impressive vocal duo with Sofia Jernberg. The way this large ensemble redefined our ideas of vocal jazz on the one hand, and “alternative jazz” on the other, was exceptionally creative even when, at first glance, it seemed simple. There is much that could be written about them, and there will surely be other opportunities, so we can return to the star of this piece.

Here I also have to add my great fondness for the Hubro Music label, which sometimes makes me think that it is giving us music from the future – an exciting and creative vision of everything that characterises the Scandinavian jazz scene, from authentic folk music to ambient music, jazz and electronics, in combinations that transcend these genre boundaries and definitions. So, in my book, Mariam Wallentin + Hubro was a winning combination from the outset, along with an opportunity to become better acquainted with Vestnorsk Jazzensemble and their work.

Spring Flood is an album of “alternative vocal jazz” that fans of Fire! Orchestra will enjoy, but it is important to point out that Wallentin is an authentic creative figure in her own right who has been leading her own projects Wildbirds & Peacedrums and Mariam the Believer for years. Although Kjetil Møster is the artistic director of Vestnorsk Jazzensemble, giving us a reference figure from the realm of “wild” Scandinavian jazz, the music is subordinate to the sophisticated creative vision of the bandleader and makes no attempt to “hijack” the listener’s attention.

I believe this is one of those albums that wins over any even remotely interested listener from the very first spin. At least that was the case with me. The album entered my “heavy rotation” and has been on one of my playlists for long car journeys for months now. It is short, but packed with “hits” and seductive in a way that hits you first in the gut, appealing directly to the emotional spectrum through which we experience music.

I also believe that the skill of crafting an effective alternative/indie/whatever song is no lesser than the skill of creating complex, intricate and avant-garde jazz, because in both cases the ultimate destination is the listener’s emotional experience.

Mariam Wallentin draws the rich orchestration into her universe; horns and strings move in and out of the soundscape, sometimes bustling and thunderous, at other times discreetly painting the sonic landscape behind the vocals. The nine-piece Vestnorsk Jazzensemble are masters of nuance and are not as sonically imposing as a traditional jazz big band, but instead function like a palette from which exactly what the song needs at any given moment is selected. There is no need for everyone to play at full force every second; it is enough for each musician to “jump in” when the time is right.

What is exciting is the way Mariam Wallentin manages to maintain the firm structure of the songs and the emotional charge of indie/pop/rock music while simultaneously showcasing the full richness of her voice. Wallentin does not force vocal flourishes in the upper registers, but instead sounds balanced; in gentler tracks such as “Red”, even lazy, while in explosive pieces like “Love Is Fire” or the title track “Spring Flood”, she shines through a combination of a playful vocal delivery that teases and intrigues us and a clear, powerful one that hits us straight in the head.

Her poetic universe is deeply personal and does not reach for slogans, but instead delves into the inner self and the realm of feeling.

“The Rhine flowed and murmured day and night outside the hotel, and the riverbank was covered with small flowers and trees already in bloom. And I encountered spring in a new place. I saw the green breaking through and the water rushing along, accompanied by entirely different scents and temperaments than at home. The familiar and the unknown hand in hand. And I alternated between documenting and imagining; about all the memories and lost treasures of the water, about the body’s longing and desire as the spring light reveals it — while the river remained in constant motion and the blue and red buds along its banks slowly awakened,” Wallentin says of her stay in Basel, where she made the initial sketches for the album, which would take on a new and exciting form over the course of just a few days of recording.

It is precisely this dedication to the personal in her poetic expression that is one of Mariam Wallentin’s great strengths. The fundamental musical idea, the lyrics, vocals and orchestration each possess their own highly distinctive and individual qualities, enriching what we experience as a complete musical work. And it is as fluid as a river and as powerful as fire. Layered in its apparent simplicity, but above all immensely exciting and seductive.

Thanks to my role as a jazz journalist and critic, I often find myself in a position to receive new albums as much as two or three months before their official release date. Naturally, I enjoy that. One such happy occasion happened in August, when pianist Tania Giannouli got in touch to tell me that she had (finally) recorded a duo album with pianist Nik Bärtsch. They had already played a number of shows together over the past few years, so this wasn’t much of a surprise and was really just a matter of time. But still – totally cool.

I’ve been a huge fan of Nik Bärtsch’s music for about 20 years now, going back to the days before he joined ECM. His zen-funk-minimalism may seem very simple on the surface, but it is full of finesse and dynamic nuance, details that keep the music moving even when it feels like we’re listening to endless repetition.

Looking at the broader discographic framework of his work, there have been various formations – from his key band Ronin to extensions featuring horns or strings, all the way to his 2021 solo work “Entendre”. As much as I had been convinced that his strength lay in the way he functions within a band, this solo album showed me that Bärtsch knows how to make his point in any context.

On the other hand, I discovered Tania Giannouli’s work through an email. One day, I received a message from a Greek pianist I didn’t know (at the time), clicked to listen to the music, and liked what I heard. It was the 2020 album “In Fading Light”, recorded with her trio at the time, featuring Andreas Polyzogopoulos (trumpet) and Kyriakos Tapakis (oud). I wrote a mini-review for Hi-Files magazine and continued following her work, but I became a full-fledged “fan” when her symbolically titled solo album “Solo” appeared, revealing the full richness of her style – a combination of classical elegance, folkloric playfulness, a subtle approach to prepared piano, but also a jazz sensibility that departs from the conventions associated with her instrument.

Although they are different, I very quickly noticed how natural the combination of Giannouli and Bärtsch felt in this context. Both are highly aware of the ways in which they use the piano as both a percussive and melodic instrument, combining bass lines with melodies in the higher registers, and so on. For now, I’m only sharing the trailer, and I’ll return to the album “Metakosmos” when it is officially released on October 23.

After Angles 4 became part of my everyday listening, I naturally became curious about what else the Relative Pitch label had released recently. Among several albums I added to my playlist, the Australian quartet Believe stood out with their album “Nature’s God”.

I don’t know much about the jazz scene in this country, and my natural first association is The Necks, especially when a band has an affinity for the avant-garde or minimalist repetition. That was only partly the case here, while my next, and stronger, association was the French group En Corps with Benjamin Duboc, Edward Perraud, and Eve Risser. Of course, all of this is extremely personal, and everyone will form their own association based on the most similar band in their own listening experience, so this doesn’t mean that the band is necessarily derivative.

In the Believe quartet, pianist Novak Manojlović made a particularly strong impression on me. He is obviously of Balkan origin – however, I knew nothing about him before, and my enthusiasm for his playing has absolutely nothing to do with patriotism, but comes purely from the joy of listening.

In the wilderness of the internet, Facebook has been suggesting videos posted by a certain Kenichi Nagatomo to me for weeks now. Once I stopped scrolling to watch an old video of The Lounge Lizards and watched it all the way through, and then the algorithm took it from there. Whenever I scroll, some video from the eighties or nineties featuring John Lurie or The Lounge Lizards pops up. Or one of the musicians associated with them, such as Arto Lindsay. Although I rarely return to Lurie’s albums these days, I’m a huge fan of everything he has done throughout his musical (and film) career. I also love his Basquiat-style paintings.

When I see these old clips, I’m often surprised by how popular The Lounge Lizards were, at least judging by the very large and far from indifferent audiences in big concert halls. To me, their music is melodic and accessible, certainly refreshing in the context of modern jazz of that time (or any time, for that matter), but I wouldn’t consider it something that would appeal to a mainstream audience. Perhaps his flourishing film career at the time, in Jim Jarmusch’s movies, also helped...

Whatever the case, the Facebook profile of the person named – or presenting himself on Facebook as – Kenichi Nagatomo is like some fantastic music channel carefully curating archival footage of Lurie and associated musicians. I’ve seen some of it before, some of it I’m seeing for the first time, and I always enjoy it. Highly recommended.

There aren’t too many grandiose albums in contemporary jazz. By that I don’t necessarily mean music built around a large ensemble, lavish arrangements and loud crescendos, but rather releases that manage to combine an ambitious concept with meticulous attention to every musical detail, as well as that certain “something” that makes us feel an album is “larger than life”, even if we can’t necessarily put it into words.

When I think of such examples, the first album that comes to mind is “Promises”, released in 2021 by Floating Points, London Symphony Orchestra, and Pharoah Sanders, where the winning combination is a legendary musician placed in a new and unexpected context that would prove to be a perfect meeting of three seemingly different musical cultures. Of course, Pharoah Sanders wasn’t just any legend, but a musician who played with Coltrane in the later stages of his career and then became one of the pillars of so-called “spiritual jazz”.

This subgenre would experience a commercial rise with the emergence of Kamasi Washington and especially his album “Epic”, after which “jazz spiritualists” would start springing up like mushrooms after rain, often relying only superficially on the genre’s common tropes – flute, harp, choir, basic modal jazz, the occasional Sanders-like overtone on saxophone, and so on.

There is probably no word in contemporary jazz more worn out than “spiritual”, which today is used as a (marketable) identity badge, ignoring the possibility that what is spiritual in music is not a set of formal and stylistic rules, but a deep and personal experience of a musician’s relationship “with a higher power”, or simply with themselves. In this kind of market landscape, a creatively conceived album featuring Pharoah Sanders is a major event because it reminds us of the essence of this music, which comes through even when you’re playing with a DJ and a symphony orchestra.

From here, we quite naturally arrive at flutist, vocalist and composer Naïssam Jalal, who once fell in love with jazz after hearing Coltrane’s “Olé” on the roof of a textile factory in Mali. “It hit me like a ton of bricks. It was a healing process in a musical trance”, Jalal says, describing the experience in a fantastic interview for this year’s spring issue of We Jazz magazine.

“In jazz, I’m moved by Pharoah Sanders, Alice and John Coltrane, by the way they express their inner selves. (…) But I’m not sure that’s down to modal music; it’s a question of mindset”, she explains further.

After growing up in France, then living for several years in Syria and Egypt, travelling through West Africa and thoroughly studying and absorbing numerous non-Western musical traditions, she spent years successfully incorporating them into her jazz expression. When she got the opportunity to visit India and study Hindustani music, she immersed herself in it more deeply than ever before. As she herself explains, while preparing to record the album “Landscapes of Eternity”, she spent five years listening exclusively to Hindustani music. “It took me a long time to immerse myself deeply in the music and not treat it as an exotic accesory”.

As you listen to the album, you will unmistakably feel that this is a truly personal, deeply lived and sincere approach to this music in the context of modal jazz, following in the footsteps of the aforementioned influences. You won’t need Jalal’s explanations to feel that. But there is no harm in mentioning them within this broader context as we think about what spirituality in music actually is, or what the “exoticisation” of non-Western musical traditions means. We won’t be thinking about this merely to feel like sophisticated, learned intellectuals and jazz connoisseurs; rather, we’ll do so to genuinely open our minds to what comes from outside the Western jazz market, and to seek spirituality beyond what constitutes today’s “spiritual branding”.

Naïssam Jalal has made a grandiose album. It is grandiose in its concept, in its meticulous attention to every musical detail, every note and every arrangement.

“It is an album of landscapes I passed through in North India and within myself” explains the album’s creator. The song titles (Tears in Delhi’s fog / Bath of forgiveness in the moonlight / Soft rain on a silent river / In the rice fields at dawn / Inner landscape in raag Kafi) evoke her journey.

The ambient introductions to the tracks create a sensory synesthesia. During the first few minutes of each composition, Jalal does not flood us with barrages of notes, but invites us to “immerse ourselves” in her musical world, while our minds naturally begin creating their own images and sensations. You can almost smell the fog, feel the breath of fresh air by the river, experience the awe of an imagined landscape. Through the titles, Jalal suggests her own experiences, but in our minds they become entirely personal.

The drone sound of the tanpura creates a sonic landscape over which delicate musical nuances unfold. Naïssam Jalal sets the scene with her lucid approach to vocals. In the opening “Tears in Delhi’s fog”, we hear her switch from flute to vocals and back again within the same musical phrase or passage. Sometimes it is a growl that occupies a “no man’s land” between flute and voice. They become one and create a highly exciting musical sensation. But they also function as separate instruments, with Jalal knowing exactly when to let one or the other take precedence, patiently building the dynamics of the compositions.

We hear another fantastic voice on the album. In the second composition, “Bath of forgiveness in the moonlight”, Samrat Pandit is responsible for the ambient opening sequence in the spirit of Hindustani music, while in the following “Soft rain on a silent river” he only enters somewhere around the halfway point: his singing almost imperceptibly and gradually begins to slide into a solo passage surrounded by an increasingly busy and animated band. It is precisely in these two sequences that we see all the brilliance of Jalal’s approach to arranging – both within the album as a whole and within an individual track.

As we listen to the album as a whole, we won’t be able to say whether this is a “jazz album with Hindustani influences” or “an album of Hindustani music with jazz elements”. We will certainly be able to attribute certain musical fragments to a particular musical tradition, but Jalal manages to create music that functions as a whole, in which both the album and the compositions have their own clearly defined dramaturgy.

For me, the key element is precisely this “slowness”, or rather the gradual way in which Jalal builds her compositions, from which the sense of the work’s “monumentality” then emerges. Not because it is loud or because there are many instruments, but because of its completeness, the multitude of details within a fluid musical whole, the clear intention to delve deeply and unreservedly into both the music and one’s own self, to entrust the listener with one’s own vulnerability, delicacy, but also spiritual strength.

Musicians:

Naïssam Jalal: flute, vocals
Samrat Pandit : vocals
Sougata Roy Chowdhury : sarod
Leonardo Montana: piano
Zaza Desiderio: drums
Nabankur Bhattacharya: tabla
Flo Comment: tanpura

Over the past few days, I’ve been working at a very intense pace at the Herceg Novi Film Festival in Montenegro, and it was only a couple of days ago that I felt the pressure starting to ease a little. As I type these lines, I’m staying about 50 metres from the sea, and I can definitely feel the touristy, seaside vibe even though I’m here for work.

Quite by chance, the first music I played after several days of silence was Daniele Di Bonaventura and Arild Andersen’s not-so-new album „Roots“, released in March last year. I don’t usually make „seaside playlists“ for myself, but this music happens to coincide perfectly with where I am and the Mediterranean spirit. Bonaventura is a bandoneon player who sounds like some kind of „classic“ even when he’s recording new albums. He’s like a safe harbour you return to after listening to all sorts of adventurous music. Safe space. Retreat. Simply beautiful music, played with quality and communicating on a universal level.

Once I got back into the right state of mind for listening to music, everything else followed naturally. A few days ago, I’d already made a note that Angles 4 had released a new album, and saxophonist Martin Küchen is one of those musicians who meant a lot to me during my formative (jazz) years. At the Ring Ring Festival, mentioned here many times before, Küchen’s band Exploding Customer and post-punk legends Pere Ubu performed on the same night in 2007. I would later realise what a fantastic pairing that was, even though one came from „jazz“ culture and the other from the „rock scene“ in a broader sense.

Later, I followed various incarnations of Angles, as well as other excellent projects by Küchen, and occasionally enjoyed their live shows. In that sense, listening to the album „Angles 4“ feels like returning to old acquaintances and is yet another perfectly „safe choice“. „Coleman meets Mingus“ with a touch of contemporary avant-garde. Before listening to this album in full, I had a few „fails“ with new albums that I gave up on after the first couple of tracks because they just weren’t working for me; but with Kuchen, everything went perfectly smoothly.

Scrolling through Instagram then led me to my friend Predrag Vlahović, who really knows the scene and who, back in the day, wrote a blog dedicated to minimalist music (jazz, avant-garde, composed, ambient, etc.). For the past several years he has been sharing his music recommendations on his personal Instagram profile. I see him as an impeccable curator of new music within a specific genre and stylistic framework, and if you have even the slightest interest in instrumental music of this kind, I warmly recommend following him HERE.

The first thing that caught my attention was his post about „Serpentine“, an album by Oren Ambarchi and his trio Ghosted (Johan Berthling – bass, Andreas Werliin - drums), joined by veteran multi-instrumentalist Christer Bothén. Unlike the regular Ghosted albums, based on buoyant repetition and the „drive“ of the rhythm section, the music here is more dynamically varied, and Bothén’s parts bring a special flavour to it. The band approach remains in the foreground, while the wind lines seem to come from the background, almost like a „layer“, rather than a classic jazz solo. A bull’s-eye.

Feeling grateful for this successful recommendation, I went to Predrag’s profile to see what else he had written about in recent days. What particularly caught my eye was that he had revisited the work of the legendary Bang On a Can collective. First, he recommended the Bandcamp article „How Bang On A Can Rejuvenated New York’s Improvisational Spirit“ and then the album „Bang on a Can Classics“, which I found and played during an evening break in my hotel room.

Over the years, I’ve been very much aware of this group’s existence, especially since clarinetist Ken Thomson joined them, as I had previously adored him in the punk-jazz group Gutbucket. However, I had never really devoted myself to listening to their body of work, so „Bang on a Can Classics“ was a welcome introduction.

This certainly isn’t jazz music, but it is music that „transcends genres“, starting from what we often colloquially call „classical music“, when in fact we’re talking about composed instrumental music of Western civilisation. Bang on a Can approach „classics“ in a contemporary guise, but without populist tricks, with depth and excitement. I recommend both the album and the aforementioned article about their vital, decades-long career.

In my Eurojazzist Randomizer #21 I wrote: An important aspect of this record is its approach to prepared piano, which doesn’t mean that this is an avant-garde album in the sense of complete improvisation based on sound texture. The preparation is there to enrich the sonic picture, but the focus is on the essential values of solo piano expression based on the holy trinity of composition, arrangement and improvisation. Every segment here seems equally important and effectively highlighted, and Sanchez shines precisely in these fine nuances, in the interplay between melody and sound texture.

Since the interview isn’t too long, this time I’ve prepared not only the audio, but also a written version of the interview, which follows below.

Eurojazzist: I would like to talk to you about your latest CD, solo piano record „For The Space You Left“. I read that you started working with that material back in 2017 on a residency in some cabin „outside of civilisation“. So, why did it take so long for you to put it on a record?

Marta: Well, I didn’t finish all the material. I didn’t finish writing the music back then in 2017. Then I was really busy with other projects. Because it’s solo piano, there is no pressure. It’s only me, and I didn’t find the time to keep writing until the pandemic came. So then I was like, “I think this is the perfect time to finish this.” I wrote the music, but it took me a while to play, shape it, and to see what I wanted to do with it. I had to play the music a lot to see where it was going to go.

Eurojazzist: And the original idea, as I can recall, was to have some personal perspective on the prepared piano. So, how do you approach it? What are your ideas and specific techniques when working solo piano with a prepared setup?

Marta: The intention wasn’t to explore the prepared piano. If you listen to my writing for quintet or even for trio, I always like to play with different melodies and layers. And when you have five instruments to do that, it’s easier. But when you have only a piano, it’s harder to differentiate the things.

So yeah, I play with registers a lot. There is something happening in the highs, in the middle, in the bottom. But then I was like, “Oh, if I use prepared piano, I can actually differentiate that even more.” For example, having something on the piano that sounds percussive, it’s like I have a drum there, and then I have a different sound in the bottom part of the piano if I put some tape, and so on.

And the approach has been evolving. When I started writing, it was a little bit more complex. I just saw what other people were doing, like John Cage or others. So I started using screws at the beginning, but that damaged the piano, so I stopped. The things evolved a little bit. I was seeing what other piano players were doing and trying things. It has changed a lot.

The preparation also changed since 2017 because I also started playing the music live. Every piece had a different setup, and I realized I can’t do that because it will take 5–10 minutes between tunes to change the preparation. So I had to commit to something that was more or less the same for every piece, except for minimal changes that will take one second to do. It became more simple. And now I also use pedals for live concerts. Mixed with a little bit of preparation, way less than before. But it’s enough that I can differentiate the layers and the original idea.

Eurojazzist: From the point of view of somebody in the audience, we usually see the piano, but we don’t see what’s happening in there. So, can you tell us a bit, what’s your typical setup? What kind of objects do you put in the piano?

Marta: Normally, I would put tape on the lower register and metallic paper on the highs and a combination of Blu Tack and sticks or magnets. Right now, I basically use just pedals, and then I use magnets and Blu Tack for the percussive effect, because the string doesn’t vibrate, so it gives a percussive sound. And magnets to change a little bit the quality of the sound. I do that also with pedals.

But normally, for the record, it’s tape on the lower register, a combination of magnets, sticks, and I think rubber. It’s similar to the effect of the Blu Tack. And then metallic paper on the highs.

Eurojazzist: It’s not a technical question, but when you compose for a solo piano, does it differ for you from composing for a trio or a quartet?

Marta: Of course, it’s different, but the main idea is a little bit the same. It’s different because the textures are different. The timbre is different. Whatever is doable for me playing the solo piano is not the same as with five people. You have to write things that you can also play.

Eurojazzist: So when you start composing, you don’t have just a melody in mind, but you have the whole relations of texture.

Marta: Yes. I always say that I start with anything. Sometimes I start with a melody, sometimes with some harmony, or with a rhythm. But the more and more I think about it, I think I always have a texture in mind.

Eurojazzist: Texture in terms of how some instrument might sound?

Marta: In terms of the total effect.

Eurojazzist: I would like to talk with you about composing, but from a different angle. Last night there was a talk about how to write about music, which is sometimes abstract, completely instrumental. But, from the composer’s point of view, how do you put some emotions, feelings, or ideas that may be verbal into something that is abstract, so – the other way?

Marta: For example, when I wrote a song for my mom, it was a concrete idea about that. But normally, I think what’s in the music is not the idea, but whatever will happen, it’s the feeling that awakens in me. Let’s put it that way.

Eurojazzist: So it starts from the feeling, basically.

Marta: Yes. Even if you are thinking about something concrete. Normally, I don’t think of something concrete like, “Oh, I’m going to do a song about...” Unless I did it as a song for my mom or something like that, or about other people when I do lyrics. But otherwise it always reflects something that is happening in my life at that moment.

So, I was telling you yesterday when we played „3:30“ that I had insomnia and I was waking up at 3:30. But really, it’s not about that. I probably put the title later. It’s more like I was feeling anxious, and that’s reflected in the music. That’s how I was feeling during that time: crazy, not sleeping…

I think it’s impossible, if you are honest with yourself, not to put that in the music. Because you are reflecting, you are passing everything that is happening in the world through your own system. Whatever you are feeling, and whatever you are living, is going to be in the music. Even if you don’t want to.

Eurojazzist: And for this solo record, can you remember what the inspirations were, and how did you think about converting your emotions into some sounds?

Marta: I don’t remember exactly how I was feeling, but I think I can see some kind of nostalgia or loneliness. Or I was in the middle of the woods and it was snowing, you feel a little bit... You are by yourself all day. I can remember it was like, it’s not sadness, but a little bit of some nostalgic feeling and loneliness when I was in McDowell residency.

Then came the pieces that I wrote during the pandemic. I think you can feel that these are from a different period. And these are more crazy.

Eurojazzist: So when it comes to solo piano, does it usually start from some sense of solitude or being with yourself?

Marta: No. I don’t think that necessarily. During this residency you see other people, and you are with them, but also it’s people that you don’t know. And you spend the whole day. You have dinner with the people, but then the rest of the day is just you. And the phone, in my cabin at that point, didn’t work. So I couldn’t even call friends. And it’s snowing. Sometimes you can’t leave the cabin. You have to stay there the whole day.

And yes, it’s a little bit lonely. A little bit.

About a month ago, I had a meeting at Radio Belgrade with my dear editors, where we discussed a number of things – from some concerts we might organize next season at Studio 6 to the program itself and my shows. We also came to the idea that I could add one playlist a month to my schedule, running for 50–60 minutes (depending on the flexible radio schedule).

In the past, I only made some New Year’s “best of” playlists for the Radio, but my focus was always either on complete concerts or albums. There were also some other special occasions when I put together playlists (for specific events), but I can’t say it’s my specialty. I’ve always had the impression that this job requires a particular skill, a sense of how to organize tracks in the right way, how to move seamlessly from one mood to another, how to be diverse but at the same time coherent and logical in the sequencing… all in all, the way I see it, a jazz playlist (or a playlist in any other genre, for that matter) can’t just be a series of great tracks arranged in any random order.

My first “official” playlist is coming next Wednesday, and I’ll be putting it together over the next few days, and once it’s published I’ll post about it. There are at least a couple of radio DJs among Eurojazzist readers, and perhaps more. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the art of creating a playlist. Or am I just overthinking it?

Irene Schweizer

I saw pianist Irene Schweizer live for the first and only time at the Ring Ring Festival in Belgrade. It was in 2008, when she performed with saxophonist Omri Ziegele. At the time, they dedicated their repertoire to “classics by Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry, and other jazz greats,” as I wrote in my concert report back then, although I don’t remember too many details now. Except that it was excellent, and that around that time I had only just started thinking more deeply about female performers in jazz – where they were, how many there were, which ones were influential and how many were overlooked… and what must it have been like for Irene Schweizer, who was born in 1941? What were her beginnings like?

If today’s female jazz musicians often speak openly about the machoism and harassment they encounter well into the 21st century, at a time when we can certainly say that there are far more female instrumentalists at festivals and on respected lists of the best performers than there used to be, and that the situation in that respect is “getting better,” what must it have been like for someone entering the world of jazz and improvised music in the 1960s and 1970s?

In early 1978, Irene Schweizer joined the Feminist Improvising Group, which was the first publicly performing women-only group of improvisers. Naturally, we can easily imagine how their male colleagues reacted to this band. Some of those reactions, as well as the broader context, can be found on the very thorough Wikipedia page, which offers plenty of information and quotes.

Schweizer’s role was important and pioneering in terms of the affirmation of women on the jazz scene, but also for the European jazz scene as a whole as we know it today.

I’ve gone off on a tangent, but not without reason – the album released by Intakt Records to mark the 40th anniversary of this great label is, symbolically and appropriately, a live recording of an Irene Schweizer performance from 1986. In addition to her own compositions, she performed jazz standards by Thelonious Monk, Ornette Coleman, and Duke Ellington. Although they are very different pianists, I also felt a parallel with the great Aki Takase, who likewise has an extraordinary feel for the jazz tradition and for combining it with a highly abstract improvisational style. In that sense, the album “Prelude to a Kiss and More (live)” is challenging and entertaining at the same time.

Ayumi Tanaka

Japanese pianist Ayumi Tanaka studied in Norway, and over the following years she remained in Europe, so we could say that she is part of the Scandinavian jazz scene. Her trio with Thomas Stronen and Thomas Morgan released the album “Windflover” yesterday on ECM Records. As I write this, I’m listening to it for the first time, and I can’t say that any obvious, immediate references come to mind. Which is certainly a good thing. Her playing, compositional, and arranging ideas are layered, while Stronen and Morgan approach the rhythm section very freely and playfully, without sticking to fixed rhythmic patterns that would constrain the music. I could say this is an “ECM-like” album in the broadest sense of the term, but it is by no means derivative – Tanaka is exploring her own artistic path.

Skopje Jazz Festival

Skopje Jazz Festival holds a very important place in the history of (live) jazz in the Balkans. Since the 1990s, some legendary names have performed here, including Ornette Coleman, Anthony Braxton, Roscoe Mitchell, and so on. One of my favorite musicians, John Lurie, played here back when he was still performing live. And many others. The festival’s director and longtime programmer Oliver Belopeta has legendary status, and rightly so, since he has always approached festival programming boldly and uncompromisingly. That isn’t always easy in our Balkan countries, where culture and politics intertwine and where the budgets of a country’s major jazz festivals depend on shifting social and political circumstances.

On the other hand, the exceptional status that Skopje Jazz Festival enjoys throughout the region speaks to the value of this kind of programming philosophy and the importance of continually educating the audience.

This year’s program was announced a few days ago as well. The festival takes place from October 15 to 18, and the complete lineup goes like this:

Leonhard Skorupa New Quistel Quintet * Zlatko Kaučič Kombo BC * Pasquale Mirra & Hamid Drake * Eivind Aarset & Jan Bang * Trygve Seim Ensemble * Punkt Live Remix Eric Honoré & Jan Bang * Andrea Mirceska Quintet * Nduduzo Makhathini * Alexander Hawkins & Sofia Jernberg * Jure Pukl Analog AI * Vincent Peirani Quintet.

I’m especially excited about the possibility of seeing Punkt Live Remixes nearby in its touring format. But everything else looks great too.

*all photos and videos by Eurojazzist

When we talk about jazz, probably the broadest definition is that it’s the art of improvisation – this is a fundamental characteristic of this music that we would use to explain it to people less familiar with the genre. At the same time, this is also a magic word that comes in handy for mythologizing jazz and everything surrounding it.

Although over the years I have become a cynic who is irritated by clichés in public discourse about any form of art, sometimes I myself enjoy drawing parallels like these, because they are simply an integral part of jazz as music, as art, and even of its socio-cultural context in a broader sense. Improvisation is sometimes not just “music as such,” but also what surrounds the world of jazz.

Coincidences That Make Life

Yesterday I was at a concert by pianist Marta Sanchez’s trio in the small Serbian town of Raška, which is far from having a jazz tradition or any kind of regular jazz program. It only happens when there is some special occasion, which this time was the Raške duhovne svečanosti festival. In an informal conversation with the people responsible for organizing this concert, I also heard a fantastic story about how the concert actually came about.

Nina Nerandžić, the abbess (head) of Gradac Monastery in southwestern Serbia, was sitting in the garden of Hotel Moskva in central Belgrade several weeks ago.

On nearby Terazije Square, during the football World Cup, every four years there is traditionally a huge trading session for Panini football sticker albums, which have been extremely popular in Serbia for decades. That was also happening while Nina was sitting in the garden having her drink.

Among the children and adults in the square (there is no age limit), she spotted her former professor from the Faculty of Teacher Education, a jazz critic and journalist and artistic director of the Belgrade Jazz Festival – Vojislav Pantić. She went over to say hello, and the conversation soon turned to the possibility of promoting his current book in Raška – Nina is on the board of the Raške duhovne svečanosti (Raška Spiritual Ceremonies).

“You could bring a jazz band to perform that same evening too!” Nina enthusiastically suggested.

Little did she know that, at exactly the time of the festival, Voja was helping arrange Marta Sanchez and her band’s appearance at the Belgrade club Bluz i Pivo, and that, completely by chance, she had one free day on the tour.

Welcome to Raška

This was my first time in Raška – a town in a region considered the birthplace of the Serbian state many centuries ago, but also a kind of center of Serbian spirituality, with a significant number of historically important Orthodox monasteries. The town itself has around 6,000 inhabitants and its own local charm, as well as dedicated organizers at the local Gradac Cultural Center, who put a great deal of effort into making us feel comfortable and enjoy our short stay in town.

As I already mentioned in the previous piece, my role consisted of moderating a conversation about Vojislav Pantić’s book “Jazz Sketches of Serbia.” Since we had already done four promotions together that I have mentioned on Eurojazzist, I won’t go any deeper into this segment of the evening, except to say that the audience was satisfied. Voja is a skilled storyteller who knows how to hold an audience’s attention and shape the “dramaturgy” of his presentation, and it also helps that you can see he genuinely, wholeheartedly enjoys what he does.

Doing the Right Thing

The concert was held at the local Cultural Center, in a small multipurpose hall with 220 seats, with somewhere between 50 and 100 people in attendance on this occasion – which I would consider quite a good turnout given the size of the town and the kind of jazz Marta Sanchez plays. There were also several actors in the audience who were taking part in other segments of the Raške duhovne svečanosti program, so the audience was a mixture of locals and program participants from other cities.

Probably keeping in mind the specific context and the event she had been invited to – she was not performing for the specialized “avant-garde audience” that will be waiting for her at Jazzfestival Saalfelden in a few days – Marta Sanchez sprinkled her regular trio repertoire with a couple of jazz standards, namely compositions by authors such as Jaki Byard or Thelonious Monk, all the way to the encore, which featured a wonderful version of Billy Strayhorn’s “Isfahan.” I also felt that the material was skillfully paced so that it moved almost imperceptibly and gradually from accessible jazz toward the more complex original pieces she recorded on the trio’s latest album, “Perpetual Void.”

It is also worth mentioning that on the current tour Marta Sanchez presented a different live version of the trio from the one on the album, joined by two young musicians – bassist Kanoa Mendenhall and drummer Mark Whitfield Jr.

Mendenhall particularly caught my attention, as she was given considerable space for her solos, which she played without overplaying or “flashy” attention-seeking solos, but with great competence and a strong sense for the music of the band. One day, when she becomes famous, I’ll have a good story about how I saw her in Raška in 2026 when she was still a “promising artist.”

As I already mentioned, there was also an encore. It wasn’t artificial, with the band walking off for a moment and then coming back on its own to average applause. It was heartfelt, and all the more beautiful for it.

Finally, the evening ended with a dinner together and conversations about Serbian cuisine (the unbelievably large, enormous portions of meat at our hotel restaurant), music… and life. This morning we also managed to grab ten minutes for an interview focused on her current solo album “For the Space You Left,” which I also wrote about briefly in the previous Randomizer. I hope I’ll manage to prepare that material for publication over the next few days.

Sometimes I get frustrated that there aren’t too many concerts by foreign musicians in Serbia that suit my taste. But sometimes, through a chain of coincidences, an extraordinary event happens that changes my impression. I appreciate every such moment and look forward to those yet to come.

The first album I’m writing about this week is also the last one I listened to –just a few hours ago. I was scrolling through Instagram with my morning coffee and saw a video on a story posted by Fully Altered Artist, saying that John Hollenbeck had released a new album and that it’s „incredible record“.

I have some very fond listening memories connected to Hollenbeck. When I was just starting to listen to contemporary jazz a little over 20 years ago, one of the first bands I fell in love with was his The Claudia Quintet. I was lucky enough to see them live once as well. Later I also grew to love his large ensembles. And a few years ago I saw his duo performance with Marianne Trudel at Jazzahead! – and that was great too. Somehow I “skipped” the band GEORGE due to the always (too) large amount of new music, but there will be time.

Over these years Hollenbeck has somehow managed to evolve his expression in just the right way – every new project and ensemble sounds fresh and different, while somewhere at the core we still recognize Hollenbeck as a very layered composer and arranger, but also as a musician who bases his music on intriguing rhythmic patterns.

The current album „Peace and Justice мир і справедливість PAZ E JUSTIÇA“ refers in its title to the ongoing wars in the world, and particularly the one taking place in Ukraine. There is plenty of information about the genesis of the album on Bandcamp, and here I would only add that he recorded it with the Portuguese Hot Club Jazz Orchestra. I can’t elaborate much after just one listen, except to say that it is excellent music and, as always, a very creative approach to the large ensemble format. Hollenbeck doesn’t deconstruct it, but somehow manages to find new angles and approaches while respecting the format and tradition.

On Monday I’m travelling to an event called Raške duhovne svečanosti, where I’ll be moderating a talk about a jazz book. The town of Raška is small and located in the not particularly developed southwest of Serbia, about a 3–4 hour drive from Belgrade, so naturally it isn’t on the map of major jazz events. However, on this occasion Spanish pianist Marta Sanchez, who is building a rather nice career in the US, will perform there. She will actually have three dates in Serbia – first at Raške duhovne svečanosti, followed by two appearances at the Belgrade club Bluz & Pivo (one jam session and one trio concert). At the concert I’ll be seeing, she’ll play in a trio with bassist Kanoa Mendenhall and drummer Mark Whitfield Jr. Very cool!

Since I hadn’t kept up enough with her discography over the past couple of years, I checked what had been happening and found her solo album „For the space you left“, released earlier this year by Out of Your Head Records. I was fascinated!

An important aspect of this record is its approach to prepared piano, which doesn’t mean that this is an avant-garde album in the sense of complete improvisation based on sound texture. The preparation is there to enrich the sonic picture, but the focus is on the essential values of solo piano expression based on the holy trinity of composition, arrangement and improvisation. Every segment here seems equally important and effectively highlighted, and Sanchez shines precisely in these fine nuances, in the interplay between melody and sound texture. I’m looking forward to seeing her trio, but I’m also glad that her visit led me to discover this wonderful album.

I’m concluding this week’s Randomizer with a look at the Fluidian project, behind which is Romanian multi-instrumentalist and sound artist Emil Gherasim. I received a message from him a couple of weeks ago, introducing his work. What immediately caught my eye was that he recorded his latest album with Nils Petter Molvær, and that he had previously recorded with Arve Henriksen. Enough for me to make a note and remind myself to listen to the album „Windscapes“ when I had the time.

It is actually a collaborative album with Molvær, featuring compositions by both musicians, which already says enough about the direction of the album itself. However, Molvær doesn’t play on every track, while those on which Emil Gherasim is the only musician irresistibly remind me of some of Eivind Aarset’s more introspective work. In the album credits he is listed as playing „synths & noises, guitar & electronics, piano, sample-based chamber orchestral elements (strings and woodwinds)“, so in that sense his expression is sonically rich and colorful enough, while compositionally it differs from Molvær’s. Although, you could easily think he was a “Scandinavian musician” if you found yourself in a blindfold test.

It was 2019 when I first seriously asked myself: could there be something wrong with the way jazz is presented to audiences live?

In October that year, I was one of the guests of the “Jazz in Germany” programme organised by Initiative Musik and the German Federal Foreign Office, where, among other things, we visited Deutsches Jazzfestival Frankfurt. The programme was OK and quite similar to the concept common in Southeast Europe: some legends, some middle-aged mainstream performers, and a few bands from the more avant-garde side of the scene.

However, something felt strange. While we were waiting in the foyer before the concert evening began, I looked around and soon realised that I was by far the youngest person in the room (I was 39 at the time). By my rough estimate, the vast majority of the audience was 55+ or even older. I kept looking around to see if I could spot at least someone around my age, but the result remained more or less the same: perhaps I noticed only a few “younger” couples in their 40s, along with the few of us from the group who stood out from the average.

I didn’t understand it. By then I had been to various festivals around Europe and, although older audiences had always dominated, the age structure had never been quite this uniform. There was always a mix. I wouldn’t say the programme was really the problem either, as it was only partly “conservative”, but no more so than, say, the Belgrade Jazz Festival, where the audience is considerably younger. At the time, I was simply left puzzled, but I didn’t think much more about it.

On this same trip through Germany, a conversation had been organised for us with the artistic director of Jazzfest Berlin, Nadin Deventer, who was at the beginning of her tenure at the time. She spoke with great enthusiasm not only about the programme, but also about the way the concerts would be presented to the audience. She talked about the creative stage and sound setup for Anthony Braxton’s concert, festival locations, etc. I realised that this was not simply a desire to choose an “unusual location” or come up with some viral stunt for a young audience, but an attempt to approach the presentation of jazz music in a fundamentally different way from the usual one.

A few days later I returned home to Serbia and started thinking about all of this. From the beginning of the last century to today, music has evolved in unimaginable ways. Both in terms of genre and in the production of studio releases. On the other hand, the way music is presented in a concert setting has remained more or less the same for decades. You have a concert hall, a stage, a sound system and an audience sitting in chairs opposite the musicians. There is lighting, perhaps some projection on a video screen, 3–4 concerts per evening in a simple chronological order. Applause, a routine encore, an exhibition in the foyer to fill the time before the concert, a panel discussion as a side programme that interests only journalists, and that’s it.

Over the years I have attended festivals in many attractive locations, sat in stages inside fortresses and castles, on mountain tops, in museums, churches, on beaches, in botanical gardens, and all sorts of other places. But the essence of the music presentation was still the same, and the relationship between musicians and audience was organised in more or less the same way, with minor variations in sound or in the way we sit (or lie down) in front of the musicians.

Here we might note that (at first glance) a lot has changed from 2019 to today. One of the biggest changes is the approach to social media and the rise of TikTok and the Reels format on Instagram. It has become almost imperative to do something crazy, unusual, out of the ordinary, something that will make us stop doomscrolling. If we are talking about music, we can notice the rise of “flash mob” performances, where a group of performers suddenly appears in the middle of a city, plays or dances their piece and disappears, and then someone records it and shares it on social media and it goes viral. It is also attractive when someone plays in an absolutely unusual location, such as a cave, deep in a forest, and so on. Tourism has long been intertwined with concert offerings, but this connection has evolved even further in recent years.

My view is that this ubiquitous segment of the “evolution” in music presentation primarily concerns the evolution of advertising and PR strategies. As someone whose everyday work is connected to media and public relations, I certainly understand why these innovations are important and necessary. But as a lover of jazz, avant-garde or simply creative music, I feel that we need to go deeper, beneath the tip of the iceberg.

I started doing my current job in that same year, 2019, when I was on the “Jazz in Germany” trip. Over the years, the Komunikart agency has, among other things, specialised in working with museums, galleries and independent contemporary art productions, so my everyday work has included writing press releases based on curatorial texts, interviews with curators specialising in contemporary art, features about particular exhibitions, and so on. I studied philosophy for a time and during my student years socialised with art historians (whose study group was at the same faculty), so in a certain sense this new job felt familiar to me, while at the same time representing an exciting journalistic and intellectual challenge.

Thinking about the way curators conceive exhibitions in museums and galleries, my mind kept returning to what Nadin Deventer had said in Berlin. I couldn’t remember every individual detail, but in the way she presented her ideas I recognised much more of the approach of a contemporary art curator than that of a typical “jazz programmer” or “artistic director”. Of course, who is going to play matters and the essence is still the music and quality performers (by whatever criteria), but the way that music is presented matters just as much.

Let’s develop that analogy with the visual arts. In a conventional museum exhibiting paintings from previous centuries, the paintings will be in conventional frames, with standard lighting, arranged in an appropriate thematic order and hung on the walls, more or less at eye level.

If we are talking about contemporary art, for example from the second half of the 20th century or the 21st century, the situation becomes more complex, with installations and video art, performances, and so on. The way we think about gallery space changes, as does the positioning of works, and the lighting is different. You might come across a labyrinth; or move from a room with paintings and installations into a space for video projections; or into some kind of interactive situation where, for example, you have to squeeze past naked performers and “brush against” them (the legendary performance by Marina Abramović and Ulay).

Now, let’s imagine a jazz concert in a typical concert or theatre hall. Everything we have already mentioned – a slightly raised stage, rows of chairs, 3 concerts per evening, 60 minutes of music, applause, a spontaneous or forced encore, and so on. This kind of setup would be analogous to a museum display of 18th-century art. On the other hand, jazz music is very much alive, potent, the scene is full of creative people, young musicians who keep emerging and recording exceptional albums. The last thing we could say is that jazz is museum music, although conservative and traditional jazz, focused on the achievements of the middle of the last century, still exists and is still performed.

We could therefore say that the music being performed is somewhat disproportionate to the way it is presented, that is, to the usual concert stages and halls. If we connect this with the ever-present desire to bring the world of jazz closer to a new and younger audience, the further conclusion would be that something has to change in the very approach to what constitutes a “jazz concert”.

I am aware that there are counterarguments to these ideas. Many festivals simply bring in pop performers to attract young people who might hear some jazz along the way, and this principle has been around for decades. Many organisers simply rely on a “performer for young people” to attract an audience even if the concert takes place in a “boring” venue. I am not disputing these strategies, but I think they are simply not enough – something that the most progressive concert programmers in jazz are themselves recognising.

We could also say that concert halls with appropriate acoustics, sound systems and architecture are simply built to transmit sound to the audience in the most perfect way possible, just as it is played on stage. Or that they are designed to meet the need to rationalise seating for as many people as possible. That is absolutely true, but it represents only one piece of the “puzzle”.

Do jazz musicians simply walk into a studio, press REC and play? Or do we have a sound technician who meticulously sets up the sound, technicians who position microphones, amplifiers and monitors in particular places, and then a sound engineer who later spends several hours mastering? Studio work itself has also evolved significantly over the decades.

And then, when all of that is finished, we have people who write texts about the album, create visual art for the CD and LP cover, take photographs for promotional materials. Everything that we as listeners “hear” is mediated through the work of all these people and is never simply “the music as it was played”, but the product of an appropriate concept and modification of the original musical idea, additionally passed through the “filter” of our personal experience of listening to jazz, our personal worldview, our view of art in general, and the mood we are in when we listen.

With all this in mind, it would be logical to approach concerts as creatively as possible, but also with great respect for the emotional and intellectual depth of jazz as an art form. In that sense, I think it is important to separate the “advertising approach” from what is essentially connected to the art itself. And this brings us to the point of the text – we need concert curators.

We need them because programmers/selectors/artistic directors (in most cases) do not deal with these things, or do not know how to deal with them. At least they need to start thinking about them as best they can.

For years, the Pančevo Jazz Festival in Serbia has had a theatrical set at the back of the stage – some kind of abandoned factory or the ruins of an old building. Anyone who regularly comes to Pančevo for the festival knows this set well and has a particular visual association with the festival. They know they will not simply enter the Cultural Centre of Pančevo looking the same as on any other day, but that during the festival it will represent an entrance into a different universe, one we associate with the jazz festival and quality music.

This is not a major change compared with the typical festival situation, but we can feel that even a small intervention changes the atmosphere and, ultimately, the perception of the music, even if we are listening to it in an ordinary concert hall.

So, for example, we can hire set designers. We can hire visual artists to enrich the concert space in a particular way. Or filmmakers to conceive what will be shown on the video screen behind the stage. Or perhaps on special screens in the foyers. A photography exhibition does not have to be presented in standard frames; the possibilities are endless.

A fantastic example of an approach to concerts is the band Nik Bärtsch’s Ronin, which for years has had its own stage lighting technician (or rather – artist). It was not simply lighting that followed the musicians from above, as is usual, but particular light sources were positioned in different places on stage, while the person responsible for the lighting controlled these sources so that at every moment they followed the music and were in harmony with it. The original musical idea was not “compromised”; quite the opposite – the experience of Bärtsch’s concept of zen-funk minimalism was enhanced through a visual approach corresponding to the broader artistic idea.

All of these are approaches that are not overly invasive in relation to classical jazz presentation and that respect the limitations of standard concert halls. But if we do not want to stumble around dealing with the visual aspects of performances even though this is not really our speciality, there is no shame in hiring professionals. Curators. People who will not simply place some work of contemporary art in the concert space, but will devise and realise the festival’s visual concept together with commissioned artists, and through conversations with the festival’s artistic director and selector, with whom they would jointly determine what best suits the festival’s reputation and the space in which it takes place.

One of the most interesting examples of so-called “jazz curation” I saw was in 2016 at the artacts festival in the Austrian town of Sankt Johann. On the main town square there was a small wooden hut, a “sound cabin”, in which festival performers played three-minute solo improvisations for one person during the afternoon. You would arrive a little earlier, register with the organiser, who would enter your slot in a table, show up at the agreed time and, for €2 per person, have a completely private mini-concert. Because of the great interest, in practice these were often concerts for two. I had the fantastic pleasure, for example, of having Mikołaj Trzaska play a saxophone improvisation just for me and my partner Monika; and a natural part of the concert was also chatting a little before and after the performance – because such proximity makes something like that feel natural.

For obvious economic reasons, this is not feasible as a festival’s “main programme”, but it points to the possibilities of a creative approach to jazz concerts.

What I particularly liked here was precisely the emphasis on that essential approach to art – removing every possible form of mediation in the conventional sense, to the point where the musician is literally a metre in front of you, creating music on the spot, just for you. It was not about presenting jazz as something different from what it essentially is in order to make it “more attractive”; quite the opposite – what was emphasised was precisely its essential quality.

I am also a great lover of concerts in nature – especially those involving smaller spaces and the absence of professional amplification, where the mediation between artist and audience is likewise minimised.

It is also great when we are not simply “thrown into nature” for its own sake, or for tourism-related reasons, but when it has some artistic meaning as well. At the recent concert by Tord Gustavsen and Trygve Seim in the Romanian village of Socolari, on the estate of painter Gheorghe Fikl, I felt how this particular natural setting worked ideally with the aesthetics of Scandinavian jazz, in surroundings where we could hear a stream and found ourselves at the edge of a dense forest, with a stage made of stone and wood, in a place where “sounds next to silence” resonated with the environment. Here we did have conventional amplification, professional cameras and all the rest, but the spirit of the place fully matched the spirit of the music.

At this very concert, Gustavsen and Seim performed together with Fikl, who painted on a canvas to their music during the second part of the concert. I especially emphasise this because an encounter with the world of visual arts does not only bring jazz a creative approach to presenting music, but potentially also a new, artistically highly educated and interested audience. People who may not listen to jazz, but who certainly have the potential to grow to love it or at least occasionally enjoy it at a concert.

Why not address precisely them, and do so in a way that organically includes that community? Instead of straining to reach as many people as possible through the most general approaches, the right path might be precisely this targeted engagement with communities with which jazz has essential points of contact. And not (only) through media campaigns, but through the active inclusion of programmes that correspond to the spirit of contemporary art, that is, by bringing jazz closer to this kind of approach.

Through that process, we, the existing jazz lovers, will also come away enriched by new experiences, artistic and human perspectives.